Abstract: Atheists and the non-religious have historically been excluded from cardiovascular research assessing the relation between religion and reactivity. Researchers have suggested that atheists and the non-religious ought to have increased cardiovascular reactivity and decreased recovery following a stressor. The primary theoretical justifications for this hypothesized difference are atheists/non-religious lack religious coping resources or that they are exposed to minority stress. However, few previous studies have incorporated atheists, had adequate methodology to explore this relation, or used measures designed to appropriately categorize atheist/non-religious participants. In order to explore this relation, 61 participants were recruited and using the Non-Religious Non-Spiritual Scale, were separated into three groups: atheist, nonreligious, or religious. Participants were then exposed to a social stressor to elicit cardiovascular reactivity. Heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and blood pressure were recorded during the experimental procedure. Results indicated that contrary to the hypotheses derived from extant literature, atheists, non-religious, and religious participants did not significantly differ on measures of cardiovascular reactivity or recovery.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Contrary to the hypotheses derived from extant literature, atheists, non-religious, and religious participants did not significantly differ on measures of cardiovascular reactivity or recovery
Comparing Atheist, Non-Religious, And Religious Peoples' Cardiovascular Reactivity: A Laboratory Stressor. Rolf A. Ritchie's PhD Thesis, Dec 2019. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=bgsu15730518157556&disposition=inline
Abstract: Atheists and the non-religious have historically been excluded from cardiovascular research assessing the relation between religion and reactivity. Researchers have suggested that atheists and the non-religious ought to have increased cardiovascular reactivity and decreased recovery following a stressor. The primary theoretical justifications for this hypothesized difference are atheists/non-religious lack religious coping resources or that they are exposed to minority stress. However, few previous studies have incorporated atheists, had adequate methodology to explore this relation, or used measures designed to appropriately categorize atheist/non-religious participants. In order to explore this relation, 61 participants were recruited and using the Non-Religious Non-Spiritual Scale, were separated into three groups: atheist, nonreligious, or religious. Participants were then exposed to a social stressor to elicit cardiovascular reactivity. Heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and blood pressure were recorded during the experimental procedure. Results indicated that contrary to the hypotheses derived from extant literature, atheists, non-religious, and religious participants did not significantly differ on measures of cardiovascular reactivity or recovery.
Abstract: Atheists and the non-religious have historically been excluded from cardiovascular research assessing the relation between religion and reactivity. Researchers have suggested that atheists and the non-religious ought to have increased cardiovascular reactivity and decreased recovery following a stressor. The primary theoretical justifications for this hypothesized difference are atheists/non-religious lack religious coping resources or that they are exposed to minority stress. However, few previous studies have incorporated atheists, had adequate methodology to explore this relation, or used measures designed to appropriately categorize atheist/non-religious participants. In order to explore this relation, 61 participants were recruited and using the Non-Religious Non-Spiritual Scale, were separated into three groups: atheist, nonreligious, or religious. Participants were then exposed to a social stressor to elicit cardiovascular reactivity. Heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and blood pressure were recorded during the experimental procedure. Results indicated that contrary to the hypotheses derived from extant literature, atheists, non-religious, and religious participants did not significantly differ on measures of cardiovascular reactivity or recovery.
21% of the pedestrians in an urban setting in Belgium violate traffic lights; presences of ush buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations
Non-compliance with pedestrian traffic lights in Belgian cities. Kevin Diependaele. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, Volume 67, November 2019, Pages 230-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2016.11.017
Highlights
• 21% of the pedestrians in an urban setting in Belgium violate traffic lights.
• There is large variability; percentages below 15% and above 30% are no exceptions.
• Higher traffic volume and complexity reduce the frequency of red-light running.
• Gap acceptance theory can account for the effect of traffic volume and complexity.
• Push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations.
• Auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a lowering effect on violations.
Abstract: The frequency of red light running was investigated across the nine most populated cities in Belgium. The results show that approximately 21% of the pedestrians violate the lights. There is, however, large variability in the frequency of violations depending on the specific context. Traffic volumes, motorized as well as pedestrian volumes, and situational characteristics that are generally associated with higher traffic complexity (rush hours, number of driving directions, number of lanes per driving direction and the presence of a tram or bus lane) have a lowering effect. A number of technical characteristics of the pedestrian crossing were also found to exert a significant influence: push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations. On the other hand, auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a positive effect.
Keywords: PedestriansRed light runningBelgium
5.5. Push buttons
Fig. 4 illustrates the effects of situational characteristics which are not clearly associated with motorized traffic volumes and apply to the technical design of the pedestrian crossing. The first effect of this kind concerns push buttons: when push buttons are present, we see a significantly higher degree of red light violations by pedestrians. One could argue that this is due to the fact that these locations are associated with a lower overall pedestrian volume (see top left panel in Fig. 4). With fewer pedestrians passing, the chance of arriving during a red phase will on average be higher because a green phase only occurs when pedestrians make a request. Red light violations may thus be observed more frequently than in the absence of push buttons without any inherent effect of push buttons on the willingness to commit red light violations among pedestrians. The above explanation nevertheless also predicts a clear effect on the phase frequency, i.e., a reduced number of phases per time unit for crossings equipped with push buttons. Such an effect is not evident in the data. In the light of this, it is important to consider the alternative explanation that in many cases, the presence and functional characteristics of push buttons are not transparent enough for pedestrians. In Belgium, several different designs of push buttons exist with heterogeneous functional characteristics. Waiting times after requests are generally not transparent. The lack of transparent information about waiting times has indeed been shown to exert a strong negative influence on safe crossing behaviour by pedestrians (e.g., Eccles et al., 2007; Markowitz et al., 2006; Schlabbach, 2010).
5.7. Visibility of zebra markings
The last effect concerns the visibility of the zebra marking. It appears that pedestrians are more inclined to commit red light violations when zebra markings are in bad condition (i.e., the paint is worn off; see Fig. 5). This effect is intriguing, as it cannot be linked to marked differences in pedestrian and/or vehicle traffic volumes which could explain the degree of wear and tear. An interesting hypothesis is that the effect illustrates the interaction of physical spaces and social norms. Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg (2008), for instance, provided several demonstrations of so-called ‘‘spreading of disorder” phenomena.
The idea is related to the so-called ‘‘Broken window theory” in criminology (Kelling & Wilson, 1982) and entail that public spaces that are unorganized and show traces of decay and criminal activity facilitate illegal and anti-social behaviour. The classical example is that people are more inclined to litter in a poorly maintained public space. Keizer et al. argue that spreading of disorder can also translate itself into very subtle phenomena such as traffic rule violations. In the present context, it was certainly not the case that poorly visible zebra markings were always associated with a generally ill-maintained area. More specific underlying dynamics could be that pedestrians associate poor investments in traffic infrastructure with low levels of police enforcement or even low risk levels.
Highlights
• 21% of the pedestrians in an urban setting in Belgium violate traffic lights.
• There is large variability; percentages below 15% and above 30% are no exceptions.
• Higher traffic volume and complexity reduce the frequency of red-light running.
• Gap acceptance theory can account for the effect of traffic volume and complexity.
• Push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations.
• Auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a lowering effect on violations.
Abstract: The frequency of red light running was investigated across the nine most populated cities in Belgium. The results show that approximately 21% of the pedestrians violate the lights. There is, however, large variability in the frequency of violations depending on the specific context. Traffic volumes, motorized as well as pedestrian volumes, and situational characteristics that are generally associated with higher traffic complexity (rush hours, number of driving directions, number of lanes per driving direction and the presence of a tram or bus lane) have a lowering effect. A number of technical characteristics of the pedestrian crossing were also found to exert a significant influence: push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations. On the other hand, auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a positive effect.
Keywords: PedestriansRed light runningBelgium
5.5. Push buttons
Fig. 4 illustrates the effects of situational characteristics which are not clearly associated with motorized traffic volumes and apply to the technical design of the pedestrian crossing. The first effect of this kind concerns push buttons: when push buttons are present, we see a significantly higher degree of red light violations by pedestrians. One could argue that this is due to the fact that these locations are associated with a lower overall pedestrian volume (see top left panel in Fig. 4). With fewer pedestrians passing, the chance of arriving during a red phase will on average be higher because a green phase only occurs when pedestrians make a request. Red light violations may thus be observed more frequently than in the absence of push buttons without any inherent effect of push buttons on the willingness to commit red light violations among pedestrians. The above explanation nevertheless also predicts a clear effect on the phase frequency, i.e., a reduced number of phases per time unit for crossings equipped with push buttons. Such an effect is not evident in the data. In the light of this, it is important to consider the alternative explanation that in many cases, the presence and functional characteristics of push buttons are not transparent enough for pedestrians. In Belgium, several different designs of push buttons exist with heterogeneous functional characteristics. Waiting times after requests are generally not transparent. The lack of transparent information about waiting times has indeed been shown to exert a strong negative influence on safe crossing behaviour by pedestrians (e.g., Eccles et al., 2007; Markowitz et al., 2006; Schlabbach, 2010).
5.7. Visibility of zebra markings
The last effect concerns the visibility of the zebra marking. It appears that pedestrians are more inclined to commit red light violations when zebra markings are in bad condition (i.e., the paint is worn off; see Fig. 5). This effect is intriguing, as it cannot be linked to marked differences in pedestrian and/or vehicle traffic volumes which could explain the degree of wear and tear. An interesting hypothesis is that the effect illustrates the interaction of physical spaces and social norms. Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg (2008), for instance, provided several demonstrations of so-called ‘‘spreading of disorder” phenomena.
The idea is related to the so-called ‘‘Broken window theory” in criminology (Kelling & Wilson, 1982) and entail that public spaces that are unorganized and show traces of decay and criminal activity facilitate illegal and anti-social behaviour. The classical example is that people are more inclined to litter in a poorly maintained public space. Keizer et al. argue that spreading of disorder can also translate itself into very subtle phenomena such as traffic rule violations. In the present context, it was certainly not the case that poorly visible zebra markings were always associated with a generally ill-maintained area. More specific underlying dynamics could be that pedestrians associate poor investments in traffic infrastructure with low levels of police enforcement or even low risk levels.
Relative to themselves, people believe that an identically paying other will get more enjoyment from the same experience, but an identically enjoying other will pay more for the same experience
Overestimating the valuations and preferences of others. Jung, Minah H. Moon, Alice Nelson, Leif D. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Nov 2019. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-69146-001
Abstract: People often make judgments about their own and others’ valuations and preferences. Across 12 studies (N = 17,594), we find a robust bias in these judgments such that people overestimate the valuations and preferences of others. This overestimation arises because, when making predictions about others, people rely on their intuitive core representation of the experience (e.g., is the experience generally positive?) in lieu of a more complex representation that might also include countervailing aspects (e.g., is any of the experience negative?). We first demonstrate that the overestimation bias is pervasive for a wide range of positive (Studies 1–5) and negative experiences (Study 6). Furthermore, the bias is not merely an artifact of how preferences are measured (Study 7). Consistent with judgments based on core representations, the bias significantly reduces when the core representation is uniformly positive (Studies 8A–8B). Such judgments lead to a paradox in how people see others trade off between valuation and utility (Studies 9A–9B). Specifically, relative to themselves, people believe that an identically paying other will get more enjoyment from the same experience, but paradoxically, that an identically enjoying other will pay more for the same experience. Finally, consistent with a core representation explanation, explicitly prompting people to consider the entire distribution of others’ preferences significantly reduced or eliminated the bias (Study 10). These findings suggest that social judgments of others’ preferences are not only largely biased, but they also ignore how others make trade-offs between evaluative metrics.
General Discussion
People are sometimes called upon to assess the preferences of others, assessments which
we find to be prone to persistent biases. Across several studies, we find that across various
measures of valuation and utility (i.e., WTP (willingness to pay), enjoyment, and willingness-to-wait), people believe
that others have more intense experiences than they themselves do (Studies 1-8). We propose
that this overestimation of others stems from a narrow focus on the primary dimension of the
option being evaluated (e.g., a trip to Rio De Janeiro is generally thought to be positive, shaving
your head is generally thought to be negative). But this only involves estimations of others. Selfassessments are further informed by the subtle vagaries of personal preferences, reducing the
total preference intensity (e.g., Rio De Janeiro is encumbered by its hard-to-pronounce local
language, and a shaved head is buoyed by the opportunity it affords for a novel scalp tattoo).
Thus, personal evaluations are more moderate than are the estimates of the evaluations of others.
This intuition is strong enough that it is applied even when the target of comparison is
explicitly similar to the self (Studies 9A-9B). When asked to evaluate someone with an identical
WTP, people think that person will anticipate more enjoyment; and when evaluating someone
with identical anticipated enjoyment, people think that person will have a higher WTP. In
combination, people can demonstrate the paradoxical belief that others are willing to pay more
for the same level of enjoyment (when asked about someone identical in enjoyment) or that
others are willing to pay less for the same level of enjoyment (when asked about someone
identical in WTP). Finally, explicitly prompting people to think about the full distribution of
others’ possible valuations significantly interrupted the intuitive process of overestimation based
on the core representation of objects being considered (Study 10).
Relation to Previous Research
Why do people have such persistent judgmental errors when estimating the evaluations of
others? After all, people are not blind to the evaluations of others. People frequently observe the
choices of others, and at least occasionally, are told something about the preferences which led to
those choices. Research indicates that judgments about values and preferences are often
inherently automatic (Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Kahneman, 2003;
Simmons & Nelson, 2006, 2018; Sloman, 1996). Understanding the trade-offs between
evaluative metrics (e.g., a longer wait versus a higher price), however, is more complicated (e.g.,
Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988). When reporting their own evaluations, people have the
benefits of each metric being accessible and generally reliable, and consequently, evaluative
trade-offs are more likely to be consistent. When predicting the evaluations of others, on the
other hand, people do not have the same basis of knowledge. Without knowledge of how other
people trade off between evaluative metrics, people appear to ignore them altogether.
Consequently, they use intuitive but incomplete heuristics that people experience things more
intensely, which can be misapplied in the case of similar others (i.e., those who would like a
good as much as they would or would pay as much for a good than they would).
Previous research in judgment and decision-making documents abundant evidence that
people do not always hold stable preferences but construct them on the spot when they are
making decisions (Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998; Fischhoff, 2013; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson,
1992; Slovic, 1995). If preferences are partially constructed for the self, they might be entirely
constructed when judging others. Studies 9A-9B demonstrate that while people’s own valuation
of a good remains stable, their beliefs about others’ valuation of the same good reverse
depending on how they are asked about others’ valuation. More specifically, people believed that
others derived simultaneously more and less utility from the same goods than they did.
The overestimation bias we document also offers a new approach to understanding the
endowment effect and why selling prices tend to exceed buying prices. Previous research has
largely focused on a “pain-of-losing” account for this phenomenon, which proposes that people
feel significantly more pain when selling their good than others feel when acquiring the same
good (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Thaler, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). Another
explanation more recently put forth by Weaver and Frederick (2012) hypothesizes that instead
sellers and buyers use different reference prices. Sellers typically focus on market prices in
determining their selling price, whereas buyers typically focus on their own valuation. Because
market prices tend to be higher than people’s valuations (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991)
and both parties are averse to bad deals, selling prices tend to exceed buying prices. Our
overestimation bias account suggests that in addition to these explanations, people’s expectation
that others derive more value from goods might also contribute to a discrepancy in buying and
selling prices. In particular, sellers may believe that buyers would value the good more than they
themselves would, leading them to set higher selling prices.
Alternative accounts for the overestimation bias
This paper reports 12 experiments showing the existence, robustness, and consequence of
the overestimation bias. We also conducted a handful of additional investigations to try to
understand the forces that may moderate the expression of our effects. Though these studies do
not authoritatively answer why people overestimate others’ valuation, in combination they may
provide some hints. We review two of those investigations, and report them in further detail in
the Supplemental Materials.
> Others with Extreme Preferences.
Study 9A introduced the matching paradigm as a
strong tactic for controlling how people generate an exemplar when estimating the evaluation of
others. An alternative approach, we thought, might be to simply heighten the salience of some
comparison others who are more or less positive about the same stimulus. If people are
spontaneously thinking of an enthusiastic consumer, then forcing them to consider the behavior
of an unenthusiastic consumer might change their estimate. We examined this exceptional other
account in two additional studies described in detail in the Supplemental Materials.
First, in Study S8 (N = 807), we recruited people who self-identified as having extreme
preferences to investigate whether the overestimation bias would persist. Specifically, we
recruited self-identified fans of Star Wars movies and asked them to estimate either: (a) the
average Star Wars fan’s or (b) the average US person’s evaluations of a Star Wars product.
Though these Star Wars fans rationally understood that the average US person’s evaluation of a
Star Wars product would be less extreme than their own, their overestimation emerged when
considering the average Star Wars fan, assuming that the average Star Wars fan would evaluate
the product more positively than they themselves would.
Second, in Study S9 (N = 1214), we used the match paradigm in Study 9A with an
additional factor (Other). In addition to examining how people view identical others (i.e., those
matched on either enjoyment or WTP), we explored people’s estimations for either: (a) a person
who had greater preference for the product (i.e., would pay $5 more than they would for the
product [Higher WTP Other] or would enjoy the product 5 units more than they would [Higher
Enjoyment Other]), or (b) a person who had lesser preference for the product (i.e., would pay $5
less than they would for the product [Lower WTP Other] or would enjoy the product 5 units less
than they would [Lower Enjoyment Other]). By our reasoning, it is possible that explicitly
considering a less enthusiastic consumer would disrupt people’s intuitions for their preferences,
thereby eliminating overestimation. We first replicated the paradoxical results of Study 9A when
people considered identical others: People assumed both that those matched on enjoyment would
pay more for the product than they would, but also that those matched on WTP would enjoy the
product more than they would. But importantly, people asked to consider lower enjoyment others
(i.e., those who would enjoy the product 5 units less than they would) rationally assumed that
those others would pay less for the product than they would, and people asked to consider lower
WTP others (i.e., those who would pay $5 less than they would for the product) rationally
assumed that those others would enjoy the product less than they would.
Together, the results from these two supplemental studies bolster our finding in Studies
9A-9B that the bias cannot be fully explained by the salience of others with extreme preferences
or the extremity of one’s own preferences. When people explicitly consider others who are less
positive towards a product, people display rational responses. However, when considering
average others or those who should have similar preferences, the overestimation bias persists.
Although people often inaccurately predict others’ preferences, they are more likely to be
accurate about the relative difference between their own and others’ preferences of certain
experiences. For instance, if a parent were asked how much they and others would like their
child’s drawing, they would no doubt recognize that their liking of the drawing would be greater
than that of others. Or if people are explicitly told that someone likes a product less than they
themselves do, this also appears to disrupt the reliance on intuitive core representations. The
results in Study 10 are consistent with this logic: People can more accurately predict others’
preferences when they are explicitly prompted to consider others whose preferences are not
consistent with the core representation of a stimulus. Therefore, people are capable of
understanding others’ preferences, but they do not spontaneously consider and integrate the
entire distribution of possible preferences unless they are explicitly compelled to do so.
The combination of the above points, does highlight an interesting parallel account; one
that we can articulate with some clarity, but one that our present findings can neither perfectly
rule out, nor perfectly rule in.10 In our theorizing, the prospective visitor to Rio De Janeiro
forecasts a positive experience encumbered by a small number of idiosyncratic negative
experiences. That person, when judging others, starts with the core representation of the
experience (i.e., that a visit to Rio De Janeiro is enjoyable), and that confidence in that initial
intuition means that they do not adjust from there. Accordingly, whereas personal assessments of
Rio De Janeiro are somewhat middling, others are perceived to be more positive. The alternative
account focuses not on the mixture of experience within an individual that moves a high rating to
a lower rating, but rather the mixture of experiences across people that produces many positive
evaluations, but also some idiosyncratically individually low ratings for generally positive
stimuli. Consider again the person evaluating the trip to Rio De Janeiro. On average, that person
is probably positive (say, an 85 on a 101-point scale), but some people might be quite negative
(perhaps they are actively avoiding irritating in-laws back in Brazil), and give an extremely low
evaluation of the potential visit. The average person and the negative person both have equal
weight in the overall true average, but they might not have equal weight in how people form their
perceptions of the average other. In essence, it may be the case that people are fully capable of
integrating both the core representation of a prospect with the more unusual negative features;
they accurately recognize that most people think that Ipanema beach is beautiful, and they
accurately recognize that most people are nevertheless bothered by the risk for potential theft,
but they fail to capture that for some people the latter factor is so significant that it overwhelms
the former. That is, they accurately perceive the experiences of others, but they do not consider
all of those experiences when estimating the average experience.
There is merit to this account. First, even for very positive stimuli, there are always a
number of participants whose valuations are quite low. Consider, just as an example, the density
plot for WTP for a movie ticket from Study 1. The mean is not low, but the distribution is hardly
normal, and a sizable fraction of participants (26.4%) say that they are willing to pay $0. Perhaps
it is exactly that segment of the population that people are failing to identify when constructing
their averages. The distributions generated by participants in Study 10 partially challenge the
extreme version of that possibility. Participants generated very accurate representations of other
people’s WTP (albeit less accurate for other people’s enjoyment), but still showed the overall
bias. Still, it may be the case that people are capable of bringing the full and accurate
representation of the distribution to mind, but they do not do so unless prompted.
For now, we remain agnostic. It could be the case that the core representation of a
positive product or experience creates an intuition that biases predictions about everyone
upward, or it may be the case that creates a mental sample that is biased by selecting out those
people who are uncharacteristically negative. Some of our data seems more consistent with one,
but none of it is so consistent to eliminate the possibility of the other. We think that future
research can hopefully untangle those (and we hope that we are the researchers who do so).
Abstract: People often make judgments about their own and others’ valuations and preferences. Across 12 studies (N = 17,594), we find a robust bias in these judgments such that people overestimate the valuations and preferences of others. This overestimation arises because, when making predictions about others, people rely on their intuitive core representation of the experience (e.g., is the experience generally positive?) in lieu of a more complex representation that might also include countervailing aspects (e.g., is any of the experience negative?). We first demonstrate that the overestimation bias is pervasive for a wide range of positive (Studies 1–5) and negative experiences (Study 6). Furthermore, the bias is not merely an artifact of how preferences are measured (Study 7). Consistent with judgments based on core representations, the bias significantly reduces when the core representation is uniformly positive (Studies 8A–8B). Such judgments lead to a paradox in how people see others trade off between valuation and utility (Studies 9A–9B). Specifically, relative to themselves, people believe that an identically paying other will get more enjoyment from the same experience, but paradoxically, that an identically enjoying other will pay more for the same experience. Finally, consistent with a core representation explanation, explicitly prompting people to consider the entire distribution of others’ preferences significantly reduced or eliminated the bias (Study 10). These findings suggest that social judgments of others’ preferences are not only largely biased, but they also ignore how others make trade-offs between evaluative metrics.
General Discussion
People are sometimes called upon to assess the preferences of others, assessments which
we find to be prone to persistent biases. Across several studies, we find that across various
measures of valuation and utility (i.e., WTP (willingness to pay), enjoyment, and willingness-to-wait), people believe
that others have more intense experiences than they themselves do (Studies 1-8). We propose
that this overestimation of others stems from a narrow focus on the primary dimension of the
option being evaluated (e.g., a trip to Rio De Janeiro is generally thought to be positive, shaving
your head is generally thought to be negative). But this only involves estimations of others. Selfassessments are further informed by the subtle vagaries of personal preferences, reducing the
total preference intensity (e.g., Rio De Janeiro is encumbered by its hard-to-pronounce local
language, and a shaved head is buoyed by the opportunity it affords for a novel scalp tattoo).
Thus, personal evaluations are more moderate than are the estimates of the evaluations of others.
This intuition is strong enough that it is applied even when the target of comparison is
explicitly similar to the self (Studies 9A-9B). When asked to evaluate someone with an identical
WTP, people think that person will anticipate more enjoyment; and when evaluating someone
with identical anticipated enjoyment, people think that person will have a higher WTP. In
combination, people can demonstrate the paradoxical belief that others are willing to pay more
for the same level of enjoyment (when asked about someone identical in enjoyment) or that
others are willing to pay less for the same level of enjoyment (when asked about someone
identical in WTP). Finally, explicitly prompting people to think about the full distribution of
others’ possible valuations significantly interrupted the intuitive process of overestimation based
on the core representation of objects being considered (Study 10).
Relation to Previous Research
Why do people have such persistent judgmental errors when estimating the evaluations of
others? After all, people are not blind to the evaluations of others. People frequently observe the
choices of others, and at least occasionally, are told something about the preferences which led to
those choices. Research indicates that judgments about values and preferences are often
inherently automatic (Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Kahneman, 2003;
Simmons & Nelson, 2006, 2018; Sloman, 1996). Understanding the trade-offs between
evaluative metrics (e.g., a longer wait versus a higher price), however, is more complicated (e.g.,
Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988). When reporting their own evaluations, people have the
benefits of each metric being accessible and generally reliable, and consequently, evaluative
trade-offs are more likely to be consistent. When predicting the evaluations of others, on the
other hand, people do not have the same basis of knowledge. Without knowledge of how other
people trade off between evaluative metrics, people appear to ignore them altogether.
Consequently, they use intuitive but incomplete heuristics that people experience things more
intensely, which can be misapplied in the case of similar others (i.e., those who would like a
good as much as they would or would pay as much for a good than they would).
Previous research in judgment and decision-making documents abundant evidence that
people do not always hold stable preferences but construct them on the spot when they are
making decisions (Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998; Fischhoff, 2013; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson,
1992; Slovic, 1995). If preferences are partially constructed for the self, they might be entirely
constructed when judging others. Studies 9A-9B demonstrate that while people’s own valuation
of a good remains stable, their beliefs about others’ valuation of the same good reverse
depending on how they are asked about others’ valuation. More specifically, people believed that
others derived simultaneously more and less utility from the same goods than they did.
The overestimation bias we document also offers a new approach to understanding the
endowment effect and why selling prices tend to exceed buying prices. Previous research has
largely focused on a “pain-of-losing” account for this phenomenon, which proposes that people
feel significantly more pain when selling their good than others feel when acquiring the same
good (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Thaler, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). Another
explanation more recently put forth by Weaver and Frederick (2012) hypothesizes that instead
sellers and buyers use different reference prices. Sellers typically focus on market prices in
determining their selling price, whereas buyers typically focus on their own valuation. Because
market prices tend to be higher than people’s valuations (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991)
and both parties are averse to bad deals, selling prices tend to exceed buying prices. Our
overestimation bias account suggests that in addition to these explanations, people’s expectation
that others derive more value from goods might also contribute to a discrepancy in buying and
selling prices. In particular, sellers may believe that buyers would value the good more than they
themselves would, leading them to set higher selling prices.
Alternative accounts for the overestimation bias
This paper reports 12 experiments showing the existence, robustness, and consequence of
the overestimation bias. We also conducted a handful of additional investigations to try to
understand the forces that may moderate the expression of our effects. Though these studies do
not authoritatively answer why people overestimate others’ valuation, in combination they may
provide some hints. We review two of those investigations, and report them in further detail in
the Supplemental Materials.
> Others with Extreme Preferences.
Study 9A introduced the matching paradigm as a
strong tactic for controlling how people generate an exemplar when estimating the evaluation of
others. An alternative approach, we thought, might be to simply heighten the salience of some
comparison others who are more or less positive about the same stimulus. If people are
spontaneously thinking of an enthusiastic consumer, then forcing them to consider the behavior
of an unenthusiastic consumer might change their estimate. We examined this exceptional other
account in two additional studies described in detail in the Supplemental Materials.
First, in Study S8 (N = 807), we recruited people who self-identified as having extreme
preferences to investigate whether the overestimation bias would persist. Specifically, we
recruited self-identified fans of Star Wars movies and asked them to estimate either: (a) the
average Star Wars fan’s or (b) the average US person’s evaluations of a Star Wars product.
Though these Star Wars fans rationally understood that the average US person’s evaluation of a
Star Wars product would be less extreme than their own, their overestimation emerged when
considering the average Star Wars fan, assuming that the average Star Wars fan would evaluate
the product more positively than they themselves would.
Second, in Study S9 (N = 1214), we used the match paradigm in Study 9A with an
additional factor (Other). In addition to examining how people view identical others (i.e., those
matched on either enjoyment or WTP), we explored people’s estimations for either: (a) a person
who had greater preference for the product (i.e., would pay $5 more than they would for the
product [Higher WTP Other] or would enjoy the product 5 units more than they would [Higher
Enjoyment Other]), or (b) a person who had lesser preference for the product (i.e., would pay $5
less than they would for the product [Lower WTP Other] or would enjoy the product 5 units less
than they would [Lower Enjoyment Other]). By our reasoning, it is possible that explicitly
considering a less enthusiastic consumer would disrupt people’s intuitions for their preferences,
thereby eliminating overestimation. We first replicated the paradoxical results of Study 9A when
people considered identical others: People assumed both that those matched on enjoyment would
pay more for the product than they would, but also that those matched on WTP would enjoy the
product more than they would. But importantly, people asked to consider lower enjoyment others
(i.e., those who would enjoy the product 5 units less than they would) rationally assumed that
those others would pay less for the product than they would, and people asked to consider lower
WTP others (i.e., those who would pay $5 less than they would for the product) rationally
assumed that those others would enjoy the product less than they would.
Together, the results from these two supplemental studies bolster our finding in Studies
9A-9B that the bias cannot be fully explained by the salience of others with extreme preferences
or the extremity of one’s own preferences. When people explicitly consider others who are less
positive towards a product, people display rational responses. However, when considering
average others or those who should have similar preferences, the overestimation bias persists.
Although people often inaccurately predict others’ preferences, they are more likely to be
accurate about the relative difference between their own and others’ preferences of certain
experiences. For instance, if a parent were asked how much they and others would like their
child’s drawing, they would no doubt recognize that their liking of the drawing would be greater
than that of others. Or if people are explicitly told that someone likes a product less than they
themselves do, this also appears to disrupt the reliance on intuitive core representations. The
results in Study 10 are consistent with this logic: People can more accurately predict others’
preferences when they are explicitly prompted to consider others whose preferences are not
consistent with the core representation of a stimulus. Therefore, people are capable of
understanding others’ preferences, but they do not spontaneously consider and integrate the
entire distribution of possible preferences unless they are explicitly compelled to do so.
The combination of the above points, does highlight an interesting parallel account; one
that we can articulate with some clarity, but one that our present findings can neither perfectly
rule out, nor perfectly rule in.10 In our theorizing, the prospective visitor to Rio De Janeiro
forecasts a positive experience encumbered by a small number of idiosyncratic negative
experiences. That person, when judging others, starts with the core representation of the
experience (i.e., that a visit to Rio De Janeiro is enjoyable), and that confidence in that initial
intuition means that they do not adjust from there. Accordingly, whereas personal assessments of
Rio De Janeiro are somewhat middling, others are perceived to be more positive. The alternative
account focuses not on the mixture of experience within an individual that moves a high rating to
a lower rating, but rather the mixture of experiences across people that produces many positive
evaluations, but also some idiosyncratically individually low ratings for generally positive
stimuli. Consider again the person evaluating the trip to Rio De Janeiro. On average, that person
is probably positive (say, an 85 on a 101-point scale), but some people might be quite negative
(perhaps they are actively avoiding irritating in-laws back in Brazil), and give an extremely low
evaluation of the potential visit. The average person and the negative person both have equal
weight in the overall true average, but they might not have equal weight in how people form their
perceptions of the average other. In essence, it may be the case that people are fully capable of
integrating both the core representation of a prospect with the more unusual negative features;
they accurately recognize that most people think that Ipanema beach is beautiful, and they
accurately recognize that most people are nevertheless bothered by the risk for potential theft,
but they fail to capture that for some people the latter factor is so significant that it overwhelms
the former. That is, they accurately perceive the experiences of others, but they do not consider
all of those experiences when estimating the average experience.
There is merit to this account. First, even for very positive stimuli, there are always a
number of participants whose valuations are quite low. Consider, just as an example, the density
plot for WTP for a movie ticket from Study 1. The mean is not low, but the distribution is hardly
normal, and a sizable fraction of participants (26.4%) say that they are willing to pay $0. Perhaps
it is exactly that segment of the population that people are failing to identify when constructing
their averages. The distributions generated by participants in Study 10 partially challenge the
extreme version of that possibility. Participants generated very accurate representations of other
people’s WTP (albeit less accurate for other people’s enjoyment), but still showed the overall
bias. Still, it may be the case that people are capable of bringing the full and accurate
representation of the distribution to mind, but they do not do so unless prompted.
For now, we remain agnostic. It could be the case that the core representation of a
positive product or experience creates an intuition that biases predictions about everyone
upward, or it may be the case that creates a mental sample that is biased by selecting out those
people who are uncharacteristically negative. Some of our data seems more consistent with one,
but none of it is so consistent to eliminate the possibility of the other. We think that future
research can hopefully untangle those (and we hope that we are the researchers who do so).
Friday, November 22, 2019
The Negativity Bias, Revisited: Evidence from Neuroscience Measures and an Individual Differences Approach
The Negativity Bias, Revisited: Evidence from Neuroscience Measures and an Individual Differences Approach. Catherine J. Norris. Social Neuroscience, Nov 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2019.1696225
Abstract: Past research has provided support for the existence of a negativity bias, the tendency for negativity to have a stronger impact than positivity. Theoretically, the negativity bias provides an evolutionary advantage, as it is more critical for survival to avoid a harmful stimulus than to pursue a potentially helpful one. The current paper reviews the theoretical grounding of the negativity bias in the Evaluative Space Model, and presents recent findings using a multilevel approach that further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the negativity bias and underscore the importance of the negativity bias for human functioning.
Keywords: ERPs, fMRI, neuroticism, personality, gender, age
Abstract: Past research has provided support for the existence of a negativity bias, the tendency for negativity to have a stronger impact than positivity. Theoretically, the negativity bias provides an evolutionary advantage, as it is more critical for survival to avoid a harmful stimulus than to pursue a potentially helpful one. The current paper reviews the theoretical grounding of the negativity bias in the Evaluative Space Model, and presents recent findings using a multilevel approach that further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the negativity bias and underscore the importance of the negativity bias for human functioning.
Keywords: ERPs, fMRI, neuroticism, personality, gender, age
We find that affective arousal increases the amount & the severity of self-disclosure, and that self-disclosure is also increased by physiological arousal; often-thought-about thoughts are more likely to be disclosed
Arousal increases self-disclosure. Brent Coker, Ann L. McGill. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 87, March 2020, 103928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103928
Abstract: This research tests the hypothesis that arousal increases self-disclosure. We find that affective arousal increases the amount (study 1) and the severity (study 2) of self-disclosure, and that self-disclosure is also increased by physiological arousal (study 3). We further explore the moderating effect of thought frequency on the arousal-disclosure relationship, finding that often-thought-about thoughts are more likely to be disclosed than less thought-about thoughts. This research has practical importance in terms of understanding when and why people self-disclose personal information, and enriches our understanding of the theoretical relationship between arousal and information sharing.
Abstract: This research tests the hypothesis that arousal increases self-disclosure. We find that affective arousal increases the amount (study 1) and the severity (study 2) of self-disclosure, and that self-disclosure is also increased by physiological arousal (study 3). We further explore the moderating effect of thought frequency on the arousal-disclosure relationship, finding that often-thought-about thoughts are more likely to be disclosed than less thought-about thoughts. This research has practical importance in terms of understanding when and why people self-disclose personal information, and enriches our understanding of the theoretical relationship between arousal and information sharing.
In 2010, Fanelli reported a positive result rate of 91.5% for psychology papers; these authors found only 42.65% positive results papers in the Registered Reports they reviewed
Scheel, A. M. (2019, March 12). Positive result rates in psychology: Registered Reports compared to the conventional literature. ZPID (Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information). https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.2390
Abstract
Background: Several studies have found the scientific literature in psychology to be characterised by an exceptionally high rate of publications that report 'positive' results (supporting their main research hypothesis) on the one hand, and notoriously low statistical power on the other (Sterling, 1959; Fanelli, 2010; Maxwell, 2004). These findings are at odds with each other and likely reflect a tendency to under-report negative results, through mechanisms such as file-drawering, publication bias, and 'questionable research practices' like p-hacking and HARKing. A strong bias against negative results can lead to an inflated false positive rate and inflated effect sizes in the literature, making it difficult for researchers to build on previous work and increasing the risk of ineffective or harmful 'evidence-based' applications and policies. In 2013, Registered Reports (RRs) were developed as a new publication format to reduce under-reporting of negative results by mitigating file-drawering, publication bias, and questionable research practices: Before collecting and analysing their data, authors submit a protocol containing their hypotheses and methods to a journal, where it gets reviewed and, if successful, receives 'in-principle acceptance' which guarantees publication once the results are in, regardless of the outcome. Given their bias-reducing safeguards, we should expect a lower positive result rate in RRs compared to the non-RR literature, but to date no structured comparison of RRs and non-RRs has been offered.
Objectives: Fanelli (2010) presented a simple method to assess the positive result rate in a large sample of publications. We used his method to replicate his results for the (non-RR) psychology literature since 2013 and compare it to all published RRs in psychology.
Hypothesis: Using Fanelli's method, we tested the hypothesis that published RRs in psychology have a lower positive result rate than non-RRs in psychology published in the same time range (2013-2018). We would reject this hypothesis if the difference between RRs and non-RRs were found to be significantly smaller than 6%. Method: To obtain the non-RR sample, we applied Fanelli's (2010) sampling strategy: We searched all journals listed in the 'Psychiatry/Psychology' category of the Essential Science Indicators database for the phrase 'test* the hypothes*' and picked a random sample of 150 publications of all search results, deviating from Fanelli only in restricting the year of publication to 2013-2018. To obtain the RR sample, we relied on a list of published RRs curated by the Center for Open Science (https://www.zotero.org/groups/479248/osf/items/collectionKey/KEJP68G9?) which at the time had 152 entries, and excluded all publications that were not in psychology or not certainly RRs, leaving 81 publications. The positive result rate was determined by identifying the first hypothesis mentioned in the abstract or full text and coding whether it was (fully or partially) supported or not supported, and then for each group calculating the proportion of papers that reported support. Methods and analyses were preregistered at https://osf.io/s8e97/.
Results: Eight non-RRs and 13 RRs were excluded because they either did not test a hypothesis or could not be coded for other reasons, leaving 142 non-RRs and 68 RRs. The positive result rate was 95.77% for non-RRs and 42.65% for RRs. The proportion difference was significantly different from zero (one-sided Fisher's exact test, alpha = .05), p < .0001, and not significantly smaller than our smallest effect size of interest of 6% in an equivalence test, Z = -7.564, p > .999. For an exploratory analysis we also coded whether or not a paper contained a replication of previous work and found that none of the non-RRs, but two thirds (42/68) of the RRs did. The positive result rate for replication RRs was slightly lower (35.71%) than for original RRs (53.85%), but this difference was not significant, p = .112.
Conclusions and implications: In 2010, Fanelli reported a positive result rate of 91.5% for the field of psychology. Using the same method, we found a rate of 95.77% for the time between 2013 and 2018, suggesting that the rate has not gone down in recent years. In contrast, with only 42.65% the new population of Registered Reports shows a strikingly lower positive result rate than the non-RR literature. This difference may be somewhat smaller when focussing only on original work, but the RR population is currently too small to draw strong conclusions about any differences between replication and original studies. Our conclusions are limited by the different sampling procedures for RRs and non-RRs and by the observational nature of our study, which did not allow us to account for potential confounding factors. Nonetheless, our results are in line with the assumption that RRs reduce under-reporting of negative results and provide a first estimate for the difference between this new population of studies and the conventional literature.
Abstract
Background: Several studies have found the scientific literature in psychology to be characterised by an exceptionally high rate of publications that report 'positive' results (supporting their main research hypothesis) on the one hand, and notoriously low statistical power on the other (Sterling, 1959; Fanelli, 2010; Maxwell, 2004). These findings are at odds with each other and likely reflect a tendency to under-report negative results, through mechanisms such as file-drawering, publication bias, and 'questionable research practices' like p-hacking and HARKing. A strong bias against negative results can lead to an inflated false positive rate and inflated effect sizes in the literature, making it difficult for researchers to build on previous work and increasing the risk of ineffective or harmful 'evidence-based' applications and policies. In 2013, Registered Reports (RRs) were developed as a new publication format to reduce under-reporting of negative results by mitigating file-drawering, publication bias, and questionable research practices: Before collecting and analysing their data, authors submit a protocol containing their hypotheses and methods to a journal, where it gets reviewed and, if successful, receives 'in-principle acceptance' which guarantees publication once the results are in, regardless of the outcome. Given their bias-reducing safeguards, we should expect a lower positive result rate in RRs compared to the non-RR literature, but to date no structured comparison of RRs and non-RRs has been offered.
Objectives: Fanelli (2010) presented a simple method to assess the positive result rate in a large sample of publications. We used his method to replicate his results for the (non-RR) psychology literature since 2013 and compare it to all published RRs in psychology.
Hypothesis: Using Fanelli's method, we tested the hypothesis that published RRs in psychology have a lower positive result rate than non-RRs in psychology published in the same time range (2013-2018). We would reject this hypothesis if the difference between RRs and non-RRs were found to be significantly smaller than 6%. Method: To obtain the non-RR sample, we applied Fanelli's (2010) sampling strategy: We searched all journals listed in the 'Psychiatry/Psychology' category of the Essential Science Indicators database for the phrase 'test* the hypothes*' and picked a random sample of 150 publications of all search results, deviating from Fanelli only in restricting the year of publication to 2013-2018. To obtain the RR sample, we relied on a list of published RRs curated by the Center for Open Science (https://www.zotero.org/groups/479248/osf/items/collectionKey/KEJP68G9?) which at the time had 152 entries, and excluded all publications that were not in psychology or not certainly RRs, leaving 81 publications. The positive result rate was determined by identifying the first hypothesis mentioned in the abstract or full text and coding whether it was (fully or partially) supported or not supported, and then for each group calculating the proportion of papers that reported support. Methods and analyses were preregistered at https://osf.io/s8e97/.
Results: Eight non-RRs and 13 RRs were excluded because they either did not test a hypothesis or could not be coded for other reasons, leaving 142 non-RRs and 68 RRs. The positive result rate was 95.77% for non-RRs and 42.65% for RRs. The proportion difference was significantly different from zero (one-sided Fisher's exact test, alpha = .05), p < .0001, and not significantly smaller than our smallest effect size of interest of 6% in an equivalence test, Z = -7.564, p > .999. For an exploratory analysis we also coded whether or not a paper contained a replication of previous work and found that none of the non-RRs, but two thirds (42/68) of the RRs did. The positive result rate for replication RRs was slightly lower (35.71%) than for original RRs (53.85%), but this difference was not significant, p = .112.
Conclusions and implications: In 2010, Fanelli reported a positive result rate of 91.5% for the field of psychology. Using the same method, we found a rate of 95.77% for the time between 2013 and 2018, suggesting that the rate has not gone down in recent years. In contrast, with only 42.65% the new population of Registered Reports shows a strikingly lower positive result rate than the non-RR literature. This difference may be somewhat smaller when focussing only on original work, but the RR population is currently too small to draw strong conclusions about any differences between replication and original studies. Our conclusions are limited by the different sampling procedures for RRs and non-RRs and by the observational nature of our study, which did not allow us to account for potential confounding factors. Nonetheless, our results are in line with the assumption that RRs reduce under-reporting of negative results and provide a first estimate for the difference between this new population of studies and the conventional literature.
Credibility, communication, and climate change: Lifestyle inconsistency and do-gooder derogation
Credibility, communication, and climate change: How lifestyle inconsistency and do-gooder derogation impact decarbonization advocacy. Gregg Sparkman, Shahzeen Z. Attari. Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 59, January 2020, 101290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101290
Abstract: The present research examines two distinct pitfalls for advocates aiming to motivate others to use renewable energy and reduce their carbon footprint. Recent research has found that science communicators and advocates may be judged for inconsistency between their behavior and advocacy—where information that an advocate's lifestyle has a large carbon footprint can undermine their appeals to live more sustainably or support policies to address climate change. Conversely, in other advocacy domains, research on do-gooder derogation has found that exemplary behavior among advocates can lead people to feel defensive about their own shortcomings and reject the exemplar and their cause. Do environmental advocates have to worry about both do-gooder derogation and behavior-advocacy inconsistency? Further, do different types of advocates have to worry about these pitfalls equally? To answer these questions, we use an online survey in the United States (N = 2362) to contrast the effectiveness of advocacy from peers and from experts across three levels of sustainable lifestyles: not sustainable, somewhat sustainable, and highly sustainable. We find strong evidence for the negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency for both neighbors and experts, albeit much larger impacts for experts. Further, we also find partial evidence for do-gooder derogation for neighbors and experts: highly sustainable advocates were not more influential than somewhat sustainable ones—instead they were marginally worse. Overall, these results suggest that advocates, especially experts, are most credible and influential when they adopt many sustainable behaviors in their day-to-day lives, so long as they are not seen as too extreme.
4. Discussion
These results show that both experts and neighbors suffered from behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects: when advocates lived unsustainable lifestyles, there were less successful at encouraging others to sign up for a residential renewable energy program. However, behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects were significantly worse for experts than neighbors. It appears that people are more forgiving of neighbors’ unsustainable lifestyles than of experts’ shortcomings—perhaps because we hold experts to higher standards for behavior-advocacy consistency than we hold peers. This also appears to be true for perceptions of advocates’ credibility.
Further, these data find that living a highly sustainable lifestyle (buying renewable energy, having an extremely efficient home, completely avoiding flying, and eating no meat or cheese) does not make advocates even more effective than living a somewhat sustainable lifestyle (buying renewable energy, having a fairly energy efficient home, and making substantial efforts to curb meat eating and flying). In fact, disclosing one's highly sustainable lifestyle amid giving others an appeal to change may run the risk of raising do-gooder derogation, where advocates’ exemplary lifestyles may make others’ feel defensive about their own shortcoming leading them to dislike the advocate and their cause. As such, we found that highly sustainable advocates were marginally less effective at increasing interest in the renewable energy program and no more credible than somewhat sustainable ones. Those who were somewhat sustainable fared well and do not appear to have suffered from concerns about behavior-advocacy inconsistency or do-gooder derogation. It's also possible that participants saw less of a contrast between themselves and the somewhat sustainable advocate: participants may have believed they were more sustainable than unsustainable advocates, and less sustainable than the highly sustainable advocate. If true, somewhat sustainable advocates may also benefit from perceptions of greater similarity, and therefore serve more easily as a social model [14]. Indeed, in a post hoc analysis we find that somewhat sustainable advocates are perceived to be slightly less socially distant than highly sustainable advocates (d = 0.11, see the Supplemental Material).
Experts appear to be judged more harshly, as their efforts suffer more greatly from behavior-advocacy inconsistency. This is unfortunate given that experts, with their wealth of knowledge and dedication to the topic, hold an irreplaceable role in increasing understanding by disseminating science and in advocacy for action on climate change. Notably, advocacy itself may not be problematic for climate change experts. Scientists, academics, and others can advocate for climate related policies and solutions in a number of ways [43], and are able to do so without hurting their credibility to the public [44] or their colleagues [45]. Research suggests that experts may be able to make substantial reductions to their footprint, such as reducing flying, without adversely affecting their academic success [46]. However, if experts involved in advocacy are unwilling to live somewhat sustainable lives, they may have trouble avoiding negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency. By comparison, neighbors experienced much weaker behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects. In fact, for neighbors there was no significant difference between being highly sustainable and being unsustainable for participant's interest in adopting renewable energy. This may present a silver lining to these findings: non-professionals, no matter their lifestyle, can still be fairly effective advocates for decarbonization.
4.1. Limitations & future directions
In the present research we examined behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects and do-gooder derogation effects in the context of someone self-disclosing their personal actions. While self-disclosure is not uncommon for advocates of sustainability [47], [48], in other contexts the targets of advocacy may come to learn about an advocate's sustainable practices through their own inquiry, a third party, or some other indirect means. For example, after the release of “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore came under attack for his household energy consumption from a series of news articles attempting to impugn his reputation and the sincerity of his cause [49]. It is possible that our results would differ if the information about the advocate's lifestyle were learned through some other means or method. Future research is needed to assess whether the form and source of disclosure about an advocate's lifestyle impacts the results found here.
The operationalization of do-gooders used in the present work required the advocate stating both the criteria for living sustainability (references to home energy, diet, and flying) as well as their excellent performance relevant to that criteria. However, participants may lack personal knowledge about how these behaviors correspond to sustainability. For instance, participants may have been unaware that dietary choices have a substantial impact on the environment. If participants felt great uncertainty about whether these actions were actually important to sustainability, they may not have experienced any negative social comparison to do-gooders. Therefore, one possibility is that do-gooder derogation may be more prominent in cases where people already understand the importance of or care about the domain and behavior their performance is being compared on.
The study design used here relies on asking all our participants to envision highly similar vignettes in order to control for all aspects beyond those we seek to manipulate. This ensures strong internal validity, but raises questions regarding external validity and generalizability. In particular, our approach does not assess actual behavior change and instead assesses self-reported interest in the vignettes which may differ from real-world behavior. Further, a survey experiment is limited in terms of providing realistic experiences with advocates. In particular, a fictional peer may not adequately resemble the vivid information people would have in real life about one's neighbors. Therefore, it's possible that rich social interactions that come with real social ties may produce different and potentially stronger results than those found here. Similarly, envisioning attending a talk may differ from actually attending a presentation in ways that meaningfully change the results observed here. The present research lays the groundwork for studies seeking to assess such phenomenon in the field which can provide greater confidence in how they generalize to real-world experiences.
While the present research examined an important outcome, interest in a residential renewable energy program, it is possible that results may differ for other sustainable behaviors. For instance, past research on eliminating meat consumption has found stronger evidence for do-gooder derogation than we found in the present context [24]. Therefore, the relative strength of behavior-advocacy inconsistency and do-gooder derogation may vary across different domains of sustainability. Further research is needed to explore how behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects and do-gooder derogation may differ depending on the behavior in question.
We also need to better understand how to overcome behavior-advocacy inconsistency concerns and do-gooder derogation. Recent research on advocacy for decarbonization policies finds that when advocates indicate that they have reduced their carbon footprint from a previously high footprint, credibility is restored [10], i.e., advocates are judged on their current carbon footprint and not their past footprint. More generally, information about others changing has been shown to be inspirational [50], and help resolve a variety of psychological barriers that prevent personal change [51]. In the advocacy context, it may also be helpful address threats to one's self image from comparisons to do-gooders. Specifically, if advocates indicate they have changed and had to improve over time, they may present themselves not as perfect exemplars, but as people who have not always acted ideally, much like the audience they're addressing. Exploring the consequences of advocates disclosing that they changed may thus be a fruitful direction for future research.
Abstract: The present research examines two distinct pitfalls for advocates aiming to motivate others to use renewable energy and reduce their carbon footprint. Recent research has found that science communicators and advocates may be judged for inconsistency between their behavior and advocacy—where information that an advocate's lifestyle has a large carbon footprint can undermine their appeals to live more sustainably or support policies to address climate change. Conversely, in other advocacy domains, research on do-gooder derogation has found that exemplary behavior among advocates can lead people to feel defensive about their own shortcomings and reject the exemplar and their cause. Do environmental advocates have to worry about both do-gooder derogation and behavior-advocacy inconsistency? Further, do different types of advocates have to worry about these pitfalls equally? To answer these questions, we use an online survey in the United States (N = 2362) to contrast the effectiveness of advocacy from peers and from experts across three levels of sustainable lifestyles: not sustainable, somewhat sustainable, and highly sustainable. We find strong evidence for the negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency for both neighbors and experts, albeit much larger impacts for experts. Further, we also find partial evidence for do-gooder derogation for neighbors and experts: highly sustainable advocates were not more influential than somewhat sustainable ones—instead they were marginally worse. Overall, these results suggest that advocates, especially experts, are most credible and influential when they adopt many sustainable behaviors in their day-to-day lives, so long as they are not seen as too extreme.
4. Discussion
These results show that both experts and neighbors suffered from behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects: when advocates lived unsustainable lifestyles, there were less successful at encouraging others to sign up for a residential renewable energy program. However, behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects were significantly worse for experts than neighbors. It appears that people are more forgiving of neighbors’ unsustainable lifestyles than of experts’ shortcomings—perhaps because we hold experts to higher standards for behavior-advocacy consistency than we hold peers. This also appears to be true for perceptions of advocates’ credibility.
Further, these data find that living a highly sustainable lifestyle (buying renewable energy, having an extremely efficient home, completely avoiding flying, and eating no meat or cheese) does not make advocates even more effective than living a somewhat sustainable lifestyle (buying renewable energy, having a fairly energy efficient home, and making substantial efforts to curb meat eating and flying). In fact, disclosing one's highly sustainable lifestyle amid giving others an appeal to change may run the risk of raising do-gooder derogation, where advocates’ exemplary lifestyles may make others’ feel defensive about their own shortcoming leading them to dislike the advocate and their cause. As such, we found that highly sustainable advocates were marginally less effective at increasing interest in the renewable energy program and no more credible than somewhat sustainable ones. Those who were somewhat sustainable fared well and do not appear to have suffered from concerns about behavior-advocacy inconsistency or do-gooder derogation. It's also possible that participants saw less of a contrast between themselves and the somewhat sustainable advocate: participants may have believed they were more sustainable than unsustainable advocates, and less sustainable than the highly sustainable advocate. If true, somewhat sustainable advocates may also benefit from perceptions of greater similarity, and therefore serve more easily as a social model [14]. Indeed, in a post hoc analysis we find that somewhat sustainable advocates are perceived to be slightly less socially distant than highly sustainable advocates (d = 0.11, see the Supplemental Material).
Experts appear to be judged more harshly, as their efforts suffer more greatly from behavior-advocacy inconsistency. This is unfortunate given that experts, with their wealth of knowledge and dedication to the topic, hold an irreplaceable role in increasing understanding by disseminating science and in advocacy for action on climate change. Notably, advocacy itself may not be problematic for climate change experts. Scientists, academics, and others can advocate for climate related policies and solutions in a number of ways [43], and are able to do so without hurting their credibility to the public [44] or their colleagues [45]. Research suggests that experts may be able to make substantial reductions to their footprint, such as reducing flying, without adversely affecting their academic success [46]. However, if experts involved in advocacy are unwilling to live somewhat sustainable lives, they may have trouble avoiding negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency. By comparison, neighbors experienced much weaker behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects. In fact, for neighbors there was no significant difference between being highly sustainable and being unsustainable for participant's interest in adopting renewable energy. This may present a silver lining to these findings: non-professionals, no matter their lifestyle, can still be fairly effective advocates for decarbonization.
4.1. Limitations & future directions
In the present research we examined behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects and do-gooder derogation effects in the context of someone self-disclosing their personal actions. While self-disclosure is not uncommon for advocates of sustainability [47], [48], in other contexts the targets of advocacy may come to learn about an advocate's sustainable practices through their own inquiry, a third party, or some other indirect means. For example, after the release of “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore came under attack for his household energy consumption from a series of news articles attempting to impugn his reputation and the sincerity of his cause [49]. It is possible that our results would differ if the information about the advocate's lifestyle were learned through some other means or method. Future research is needed to assess whether the form and source of disclosure about an advocate's lifestyle impacts the results found here.
The operationalization of do-gooders used in the present work required the advocate stating both the criteria for living sustainability (references to home energy, diet, and flying) as well as their excellent performance relevant to that criteria. However, participants may lack personal knowledge about how these behaviors correspond to sustainability. For instance, participants may have been unaware that dietary choices have a substantial impact on the environment. If participants felt great uncertainty about whether these actions were actually important to sustainability, they may not have experienced any negative social comparison to do-gooders. Therefore, one possibility is that do-gooder derogation may be more prominent in cases where people already understand the importance of or care about the domain and behavior their performance is being compared on.
The study design used here relies on asking all our participants to envision highly similar vignettes in order to control for all aspects beyond those we seek to manipulate. This ensures strong internal validity, but raises questions regarding external validity and generalizability. In particular, our approach does not assess actual behavior change and instead assesses self-reported interest in the vignettes which may differ from real-world behavior. Further, a survey experiment is limited in terms of providing realistic experiences with advocates. In particular, a fictional peer may not adequately resemble the vivid information people would have in real life about one's neighbors. Therefore, it's possible that rich social interactions that come with real social ties may produce different and potentially stronger results than those found here. Similarly, envisioning attending a talk may differ from actually attending a presentation in ways that meaningfully change the results observed here. The present research lays the groundwork for studies seeking to assess such phenomenon in the field which can provide greater confidence in how they generalize to real-world experiences.
While the present research examined an important outcome, interest in a residential renewable energy program, it is possible that results may differ for other sustainable behaviors. For instance, past research on eliminating meat consumption has found stronger evidence for do-gooder derogation than we found in the present context [24]. Therefore, the relative strength of behavior-advocacy inconsistency and do-gooder derogation may vary across different domains of sustainability. Further research is needed to explore how behavior-advocacy inconsistency effects and do-gooder derogation may differ depending on the behavior in question.
We also need to better understand how to overcome behavior-advocacy inconsistency concerns and do-gooder derogation. Recent research on advocacy for decarbonization policies finds that when advocates indicate that they have reduced their carbon footprint from a previously high footprint, credibility is restored [10], i.e., advocates are judged on their current carbon footprint and not their past footprint. More generally, information about others changing has been shown to be inspirational [50], and help resolve a variety of psychological barriers that prevent personal change [51]. In the advocacy context, it may also be helpful address threats to one's self image from comparisons to do-gooders. Specifically, if advocates indicate they have changed and had to improve over time, they may present themselves not as perfect exemplars, but as people who have not always acted ideally, much like the audience they're addressing. Exploring the consequences of advocates disclosing that they changed may thus be a fruitful direction for future research.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Women that align masturbation stimulation activities with partnered sex are more likely to experience orgasm & enhanced orgasmic pleasure, with sexual relationship satisfaction playing an important role in this process
Rowland DL, Hevesi K, Conway GR, et al. Relationship Between Masturbation and Partnered Sex in Women: Does the Former Facilitate, Inhibit, or Not Affect the Latter? J Sex Med 2019;XX:XXX–XXX. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.10.012
Abstract
Introduction: The relationship between masturbation activities and their effect on partnered sex is understudied.
Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the alignment of activities between masturbation and partnered sex, and to determine whether different levels of alignment affect orgasmic parameters during partnered sex.
Methods: 2,215 women completed an online survey about activities during masturbation and reasons for orgasmic difficulty during masturbation, and these were compared with activities and reasons for orgasmic difficulty during partnered sex.
Main Outcome Measure: Degree of alignment between masturbation activities and partnered sex activities was used to predict sexual arousal difficulty, orgasmic probability, orgasmic pleasure, orgasmic latency, and orgasmic difficulty during partnered sex.
Results: Women showed only moderate alignment regarding masturbation and partnered sex activities, as well as reasons for masturbation orgasmic difficulty and reasons for partnered sex orgasmic difficulty. However, those that showed greater alignment of activities showed better orgasmic response during partnered sex and were more likely to prefer partnered sex over masturbation.
Clinical Implications: Women tend to use less conventional techniques for arousal during masturbation compared with partnered sex. Increasing alignment between masturbation and partnered sexual activities may lead to better arousal and orgasmic response, and lower orgasmic difficulty.
Strength & Limitations: The study was well-powered and drew from a multinational population, providing perspective on a long-standing unanswered question. Major limitations were the younger age and self-selection of the sample.
Conclusion: Women that align masturbation stimulation activities with partnered sex activities are more likely to experience orgasm and enhanced orgasmic pleasure, with sexual relationship satisfaction playing an important role in this process.
Check also An Examination of the Sexual Double Standard Pertaining to Masturbation and the Impact of Assumed Motives. Katherine R. Haus, Ashley E. Thompson. Sexuality & Culture, November 2 2019. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/11/an-examination-of-sexual-double.html
Also The majority (94.5%) of women indicated having masturbated at least once in their life; reported masturbating 2 or 3 times a week (26.8%) or once (26.3%); it is not “a partner substitute”, but rather is a stress coping & relaxation strategy:
Abstract
Introduction: The relationship between masturbation activities and their effect on partnered sex is understudied.
Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the alignment of activities between masturbation and partnered sex, and to determine whether different levels of alignment affect orgasmic parameters during partnered sex.
Methods: 2,215 women completed an online survey about activities during masturbation and reasons for orgasmic difficulty during masturbation, and these were compared with activities and reasons for orgasmic difficulty during partnered sex.
Main Outcome Measure: Degree of alignment between masturbation activities and partnered sex activities was used to predict sexual arousal difficulty, orgasmic probability, orgasmic pleasure, orgasmic latency, and orgasmic difficulty during partnered sex.
Results: Women showed only moderate alignment regarding masturbation and partnered sex activities, as well as reasons for masturbation orgasmic difficulty and reasons for partnered sex orgasmic difficulty. However, those that showed greater alignment of activities showed better orgasmic response during partnered sex and were more likely to prefer partnered sex over masturbation.
Clinical Implications: Women tend to use less conventional techniques for arousal during masturbation compared with partnered sex. Increasing alignment between masturbation and partnered sexual activities may lead to better arousal and orgasmic response, and lower orgasmic difficulty.
Strength & Limitations: The study was well-powered and drew from a multinational population, providing perspective on a long-standing unanswered question. Major limitations were the younger age and self-selection of the sample.
Conclusion: Women that align masturbation stimulation activities with partnered sex activities are more likely to experience orgasm and enhanced orgasmic pleasure, with sexual relationship satisfaction playing an important role in this process.
Check also An Examination of the Sexual Double Standard Pertaining to Masturbation and the Impact of Assumed Motives. Katherine R. Haus, Ashley E. Thompson. Sexuality & Culture, November 2 2019. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/11/an-examination-of-sexual-double.html
Also The majority (94.5%) of women indicated having masturbated at least once in their life; reported masturbating 2 or 3 times a week (26.8%) or once (26.3%); it is not “a partner substitute”, but rather is a stress coping & relaxation strategy:
Masturbatory Behavior in a Population Sample of German Women. Andrea Burri, Ana Carvalheira. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, May 30 2019. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/05/the-majority-945-of-women-indicated.html
These findings suggest that rising narcissism is not a global trend and not evident even in societies that share many cultural and social commonalities with the US
Narcissism over time in Australia and Canada: A cross-temporal meta-analysis. Takeshi Hamamura, Chelsea A. Johnson, Michelle Stankovic. Personality and Individual Differences, November 21 2019, 109707. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109707
Abstract: The literature on whether narcissism is increasing in the United States has been controversial. The notion of rising narcissism and self-focused culture, however, has shaped the public understanding of generational differences within and outside the United States. The current research examined whether narcissism has increased over time in two Western countries, Australia and Canada. A temporal meta-analysis (k = 102, n = 24,990) found no evidence of rising narcissism. Findings from these two countries showed a different temporal pattern, with narcissism decreasing in Canada particularly after 2008, suggesting the possible effects of economic recession in tempering narcissism. An analysis of the subscale scores performed on a subset of the data, following a measurement equivalent analysis, corroborated this interpretation. These findings suggest that rising narcissism is not a global trend and not evident even in societies that share many cultural and social commonalities with the United States.
The dataset used, the processing code (R language) and references for the data in the CSV file are available at https://osf.io/37pe6
Abstract: The literature on whether narcissism is increasing in the United States has been controversial. The notion of rising narcissism and self-focused culture, however, has shaped the public understanding of generational differences within and outside the United States. The current research examined whether narcissism has increased over time in two Western countries, Australia and Canada. A temporal meta-analysis (k = 102, n = 24,990) found no evidence of rising narcissism. Findings from these two countries showed a different temporal pattern, with narcissism decreasing in Canada particularly after 2008, suggesting the possible effects of economic recession in tempering narcissism. An analysis of the subscale scores performed on a subset of the data, following a measurement equivalent analysis, corroborated this interpretation. These findings suggest that rising narcissism is not a global trend and not evident even in societies that share many cultural and social commonalities with the United States.
The dataset used, the processing code (R language) and references for the data in the CSV file are available at https://osf.io/37pe6
Assessing U.S. Racial and Gender Differences in Happiness, 1972–2016
Assessing U.S. Racial and Gender Differences in Happiness, 1972–2016: An Intersectional Approach. Jason L. Cummings. Journal of Happiness Studies, November 21 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-019-00103-z
Abstract: This study assesses trends and differentials in happiness among the U.S. population. Using data from the General Social Survey, 1972–2016 and the intersectionality paradigm to guide this work, I find that happiness differentials across gender and race are generally converging; however, patterns are quite complex and contingent on group membership (i.e. gender, race). Black women for instance, present a consistent pattern of improvement in happiness across decades, while White women display a persistent pattern of decline. In contrast, Black men experienced a discernable pattern of improvement in happiness between the 1970s and 1990s, followed by a leveling off in the early-2000s. White men experienced moderate gains in happiness between the 1970s and 1990s, but after the Great Recession/Obama Era, White male happiness followed a pattern of unprecedented decline, with the “happiness advantage” they once enjoyed (as a group) over Black men and women largely vanishing. In fact, although advantaged White men in the general population (i.e. financially satisfied) were about as happy as their White female and African–American female peers after the Great Recession, disadvantaged White men who were financially dissatisfied were less likely to report the same sentiment when compared to their White female and Black female peers who were similarly disadvantaged. Taking these patterns in account, I conclude with a discussion of what these patterns demonstrate regarding the changing nature of racial and gender inequality in the United States, past and present.
Keywords: Happiness Subjective well-being Intersectionality Race Gender SES Financial satisfaction Great recession Unemployment
Abstract: This study assesses trends and differentials in happiness among the U.S. population. Using data from the General Social Survey, 1972–2016 and the intersectionality paradigm to guide this work, I find that happiness differentials across gender and race are generally converging; however, patterns are quite complex and contingent on group membership (i.e. gender, race). Black women for instance, present a consistent pattern of improvement in happiness across decades, while White women display a persistent pattern of decline. In contrast, Black men experienced a discernable pattern of improvement in happiness between the 1970s and 1990s, followed by a leveling off in the early-2000s. White men experienced moderate gains in happiness between the 1970s and 1990s, but after the Great Recession/Obama Era, White male happiness followed a pattern of unprecedented decline, with the “happiness advantage” they once enjoyed (as a group) over Black men and women largely vanishing. In fact, although advantaged White men in the general population (i.e. financially satisfied) were about as happy as their White female and African–American female peers after the Great Recession, disadvantaged White men who were financially dissatisfied were less likely to report the same sentiment when compared to their White female and Black female peers who were similarly disadvantaged. Taking these patterns in account, I conclude with a discussion of what these patterns demonstrate regarding the changing nature of racial and gender inequality in the United States, past and present.
Keywords: Happiness Subjective well-being Intersectionality Race Gender SES Financial satisfaction Great recession Unemployment
Reaching Consensus in Polarized Moral Debates: Consensus was influenced by participants with a moderate view but high confidence
Reaching Consensus in Polarized Moral Debates. Joaquin Navajas et al. Current Biology, November 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.10.018
Highlights
• We asked two live crowds to deliberate about polarized moral issues (e.g., abortion)
• In small groups, they sought consensus on the acceptability of controversial actions
• Consensus was influenced by participants with a moderate view but high confidence
• Group ratings and changes of mind suggest that people adopted a mediation process
Summary: The group polarization phenomenon is a widespread human bias with no apparent geographical or cultural boundaries [1]. Although the conditions that breed extremism have been extensively studied [2, 3, 4, 5], comparably little research has examined how to depolarize attitudes in people who already embrace extreme beliefs. Previous studies have shown that deliberating groups may shift toward more moderate opinions [6], but why deliberation is sometimes effective although other times it fails at eliciting consensus remains largely unknown. To investigate this, we performed a large-scale behavioral experiment with live crowds from two countries. Participants (N = 3,288 in study 1 and N = 582 in study 2) were presented with a set of moral scenarios and asked to judge the acceptability of a controversial action. Then they organized in groups of three and discussed their opinions to see whether they agreed on common values of acceptability. We found that groups succeeding at reaching consensus frequently had extreme participants with low confidence and a participant with a moderate view but high confidence. Quantitative analyses showed that these “confident grays” exerted the greatest weight on group judgements and suggest that consensus was driven by a mediation process [7, 8]. Overall, these findings shed light on the elements that allow human groups to resolve moral disagreement.
Highlights
• We asked two live crowds to deliberate about polarized moral issues (e.g., abortion)
• In small groups, they sought consensus on the acceptability of controversial actions
• Consensus was influenced by participants with a moderate view but high confidence
• Group ratings and changes of mind suggest that people adopted a mediation process
Summary: The group polarization phenomenon is a widespread human bias with no apparent geographical or cultural boundaries [1]. Although the conditions that breed extremism have been extensively studied [2, 3, 4, 5], comparably little research has examined how to depolarize attitudes in people who already embrace extreme beliefs. Previous studies have shown that deliberating groups may shift toward more moderate opinions [6], but why deliberation is sometimes effective although other times it fails at eliciting consensus remains largely unknown. To investigate this, we performed a large-scale behavioral experiment with live crowds from two countries. Participants (N = 3,288 in study 1 and N = 582 in study 2) were presented with a set of moral scenarios and asked to judge the acceptability of a controversial action. Then they organized in groups of three and discussed their opinions to see whether they agreed on common values of acceptability. We found that groups succeeding at reaching consensus frequently had extreme participants with low confidence and a participant with a moderate view but high confidence. Quantitative analyses showed that these “confident grays” exerted the greatest weight on group judgements and suggest that consensus was driven by a mediation process [7, 8]. Overall, these findings shed light on the elements that allow human groups to resolve moral disagreement.
Most People Think They Are More Pro-Environmental than Others: A Demonstration of the Better-than-Average Effect in Perceived Pro-Environmental Engagement
Most People Think They Are More Pro-Environmental than Others: A Demonstration of the Better-than-Average Effect in Perceived Pro-Environmental Behavioral Engagement. Magnus Bergquist. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Nov 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1689364
Abstract: People tend to perceive themselves as better than average in various contexts. In this article I test if the better-than-average effect (BTAE) also holds for pro-environmental behavioral engagement. Experiment 1 supported that the majority of participants report to be more pro-environmental than others, using a large representative sample. Experiment 2 validated these findings in 3 additional cultures (United States, United Kingdom, and India) and showed that BTAE held for both abstract (other Americans) and concrete (my friends) comparisons. Experiment 3 found that participants overestimated both how “much” and how “often” they engage in pro-environmental actions. Finally, Experiment 4 found weak support for the hypothesis that inducing BTAE are inhibiting future pro-environmental behaviors.
General discussion
The present research aimed to test if people perceive themselves as more pro-environmental than others, a hypothesis often discussed (e.g., Clayton et al., 2015; Gifford, 2011) yet not previously tested empirically. Four studies consistently demonstrated the BTAE in pro-environmental behaviors, using 4,042 participants. The data clearly support a self-serving bias causing people to overestimate their own climate change mitigation, suggesting that most people perceive themselves as more pro-environmental than others. The BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was validated in four countries (Sweden, India, United Kingdom, and United States) and was found to hold for nine of 10 pro-environmental behaviors and for both abstract (other Americans) and concrete (my friends) reference groups. Study 4 tested the hypothesis that self-serving biases serve as a barrier for future pro-environmental engagement. Data showed that inducing people to perceive themselves as better than average (in terms of pro-environmental engagement) had negligible effects on pro-environmental obligations and weak effects on intentions for future pro-environmental engagement. Although a weak effect could have important practical implications, as the BTAE in pro-environmental behaviors might be a barrier for future behavior (Gifford, 2011), these results should be interpreted with caution and validated by future research.
Validity and implications of the BTAE
The aim of this research was to test the validity and implications of the BTAE. Studies 1–3 focused on validity: assessing external, internal, and content validity by testing if the BTAE would generalize across countries, pro-environmental behaviors, and reference groups and would hold across operationalization’s and methodological variations. Hence, both applied and theoretical aspects of the BTAE were tested. In the light of the “replication crisis” (Nelson, Simmons, & Simonsohn, 2018; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), replicating well-established effects (such as the BTAE) is important for validity—that is, to gain accumulated knowledge on boundaries, generalizations, and implications of psychological effects.
Variability in the BTAE
The strength of the BTAE varied across countries, showing the strongest effect in India (85.7%) followed by the United Kingdom (72%) and the United States (63.7%). The weakest effect was observed in the Swedish sample (51.3%). One explanation, as discussed in Study 2, is that the interpretation of pro-environmental behaviors differed across cultures. Content analyses comparing the Indian versus the U.S.-American sample support this assumption. Yet it is unclear if and how such differences can explain the variance in the BTAE. Another possible explanation is that the BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors is affected by values and attitudes that might differ between the countries. Yet data from the World Values Survey cannot provide sufficient support for this explanation (Ingelhart et al., 2014), showing no noticeable differences between relevant values (i.e., “Looking after the environment … care for nature and save life resources”) in Sweden (M = 2.46, SD = 1.2) versus India (M = 2.54, SD = 1.6). Similarly, the majority of participants prioritized “protecting the environment” over “economic growth” in both countries (Sweden = 65.2%, India = 69.8%). A third explanation might be linked to cross-cultural differences in response biases. Van de Vijver and Poortinga (1997) warned against interpreting intergroup differences in cross-cultural research without examining equivalence. Indeed, several studies have observed substantial differences in response biases such as extreme response styles and acquiescent responding across countries (e.g., Harzing, 2006; Johnson, Kulesa, Cho, & Shavitt, 2005; Smith, 2004). However, further research is necessary to explore the mechanisms underlying these differences in more detail (Johnson et al., 2005). In sum, although the BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was validated across countries, it remains unclear why the strength of the BTAE varies between countries.
Reference group
Alicke and Govorun (2005) suggested that the BTAE decreases when comparing oneself to a “real person” rather than a more abstract concept (i.e., “other Swedes”). Past research has shown that the BTAE was reduced when asking students to compare themselves with “the person sitting next to them” rather than “the average college student” (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vredenburg, 1995). Therefore, Study 2 tested two reference groups with different level of abstraction “Americans” (abstract group), and “your friends” (concrete group). Results showed highly similar results of the BTAE in the two reference groups (63.7% vs. 62.1% above average). Given that participants are thinking about different reference groups when being asked about “my friends” versus “other Americans” and that these groups differ in their level of pro-environmental engagement, it is noticeable that people still overestimate their own pro-environmental engagement in relation to their “friends.”
BTAE as a psychological barrier
Study 4 was designed to test the hypothesis that the BTAE is a psychological barrier for climate change mitigation (Gifford, 2011). This hypothesis was derived from the research on negative spillover effects, predicting that a first moral behavior might “license” a subsequent immoral behavior (e.g., Blanken et al., 2015). It should be noted that research has also demonstrated positive spillover effects, where a first pro-environmental action encourages subsequent pro-environmental actions (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2017; Truelove et al., 2014). This hypothesis is also in line with a self-valuation hypothesis, increasing self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), which has been demonstrated to predict behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). Therefore, one explanation for the weak negative effect on pro-environmental intention is that a dual-process of both negative and positive spillover effects is at work. It could be that the BTAE is fostering pro-environmental intentions for some people while undermining pro-environmental intentions for others. Another explanation for the weak negative effect on intentions is based on the suggestion that the BTAE is a form of availability heuristics (see the following discussion). More specifically, if performing a behavior with a high frequency makes that behavior cognitively available, and thus increases the BTAE, frequency should also moderate the BTAE as a psychological barrier, making high-frequency behaviors more influential than low-frequency behaviors. Past research has identified a number of potential moderators driving the positive versus negative spillovers (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2017; Truelove et al., 2014). Future research should examine if and which moderators might cause the BTAE to foster versus undermine subsequent pro-environmental engagement.
The mechanisms of the BTAE
What are the psychological mechanism driving the BTAE? When analyzing the data from Study 2, the frequency of behavioral engagement was strongly positively correlated with the BTAE effect size. One interpretation of this finding is that performing a specific behavior with a high frequency is interpreted as also performing that behavior more frequently than others. This suggests that the BTAE is driven by the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973), as people may be influenced by how cognitively available a certain behavior is when evaluating relative performance. Future research should further examine if the availability heuristic can explain the BTAE.
Limitations
As a first limitation, cultural comparison was confounded with means of assessing pro-environmental behavior. In the Indian sample, pro-environmental behaviors were assessed by open-ended questions, whereas predefined questions were used in the U.S. and U.K. samples. Could the differences in the BTAE between cultures have been influenced by the measurement method? Although open-ended versus predefined measurements were not used within the same sample, Study 2 reported an effect of 63.7% above the median, which was similar to Study 3 with an effect of 58.7% to 63.2% above the median. Studies 2 and 3 both used a U.S.-American sample, whereas pro-environmental behaviors were assessed by predefined questions in Study 2 and open-ended questions in Study 3, suggesting that the BTAE was not affected by using open-ended compared to predefined questions.
As a second limitation, when testing whether the BTAE affected pro-environmental obligation and intention in Study 4, order effects were not controlled for. Past research has shown that other compensatory behaviors, such as cognitive dissonance reduction strategies, are affected by order (e.g., Fointiat, Somat, & Grosbras, 2011; Gosling, Denizeau, & Oberlé, 2006). It should however be mentioned that these studies find that the first items are more influential than subsequent items. Therefore, in the present study, it would be predicted that obligations are weaker than intention. Yet we observed the opposite pattern, speaking against the influence of order effects. In any case, lack of randomization should be noted as a limitation in Study 4.
Worse than average
There are circumstances moderating or even reversing the effect. The BTAE may be moderated by both desirability and controllability, such as the effect holding for highly desirable traits but not for traits low in desirability, and that the effect is stronger for high controllable than low controllable traits (Alicke, 1985). It has been demonstrated that people view themselves as “worse than average” when evaluating their ability on difficult tasks (Moore, 2007). For example, students’ average rating of the likelihood of winning a trivia contest was 70% when the contest included easy quiz questions, whereas ratings dropped to only 6% for a contest including hard quiz questions (Kruger, 1999). Although we demonstrated the BTAE in nine of 10 pro-environmental behaviors, these were all everyday behaviors that are relatively easy to perform. Future research should test if the BTAE also holds when assessing “harder” pro-environmental actions.
Taken together, this article consistently demonstrates that the BTAE applies to pro-environmental behaviors; nevertheless, the evidence for the BTAE as a psychological barrier for future pro-environmental behaviors is weak and should be explored in future research. BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was supported across four countries, testing 10 pro-environmental behaviors, and when assessing both closed- and open-ended questions as well as both concrete and abstract reference groups.
Abstract: People tend to perceive themselves as better than average in various contexts. In this article I test if the better-than-average effect (BTAE) also holds for pro-environmental behavioral engagement. Experiment 1 supported that the majority of participants report to be more pro-environmental than others, using a large representative sample. Experiment 2 validated these findings in 3 additional cultures (United States, United Kingdom, and India) and showed that BTAE held for both abstract (other Americans) and concrete (my friends) comparisons. Experiment 3 found that participants overestimated both how “much” and how “often” they engage in pro-environmental actions. Finally, Experiment 4 found weak support for the hypothesis that inducing BTAE are inhibiting future pro-environmental behaviors.
General discussion
The present research aimed to test if people perceive themselves as more pro-environmental than others, a hypothesis often discussed (e.g., Clayton et al., 2015; Gifford, 2011) yet not previously tested empirically. Four studies consistently demonstrated the BTAE in pro-environmental behaviors, using 4,042 participants. The data clearly support a self-serving bias causing people to overestimate their own climate change mitigation, suggesting that most people perceive themselves as more pro-environmental than others. The BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was validated in four countries (Sweden, India, United Kingdom, and United States) and was found to hold for nine of 10 pro-environmental behaviors and for both abstract (other Americans) and concrete (my friends) reference groups. Study 4 tested the hypothesis that self-serving biases serve as a barrier for future pro-environmental engagement. Data showed that inducing people to perceive themselves as better than average (in terms of pro-environmental engagement) had negligible effects on pro-environmental obligations and weak effects on intentions for future pro-environmental engagement. Although a weak effect could have important practical implications, as the BTAE in pro-environmental behaviors might be a barrier for future behavior (Gifford, 2011), these results should be interpreted with caution and validated by future research.
Validity and implications of the BTAE
The aim of this research was to test the validity and implications of the BTAE. Studies 1–3 focused on validity: assessing external, internal, and content validity by testing if the BTAE would generalize across countries, pro-environmental behaviors, and reference groups and would hold across operationalization’s and methodological variations. Hence, both applied and theoretical aspects of the BTAE were tested. In the light of the “replication crisis” (Nelson, Simmons, & Simonsohn, 2018; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), replicating well-established effects (such as the BTAE) is important for validity—that is, to gain accumulated knowledge on boundaries, generalizations, and implications of psychological effects.
Variability in the BTAE
The strength of the BTAE varied across countries, showing the strongest effect in India (85.7%) followed by the United Kingdom (72%) and the United States (63.7%). The weakest effect was observed in the Swedish sample (51.3%). One explanation, as discussed in Study 2, is that the interpretation of pro-environmental behaviors differed across cultures. Content analyses comparing the Indian versus the U.S.-American sample support this assumption. Yet it is unclear if and how such differences can explain the variance in the BTAE. Another possible explanation is that the BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors is affected by values and attitudes that might differ between the countries. Yet data from the World Values Survey cannot provide sufficient support for this explanation (Ingelhart et al., 2014), showing no noticeable differences between relevant values (i.e., “Looking after the environment … care for nature and save life resources”) in Sweden (M = 2.46, SD = 1.2) versus India (M = 2.54, SD = 1.6). Similarly, the majority of participants prioritized “protecting the environment” over “economic growth” in both countries (Sweden = 65.2%, India = 69.8%). A third explanation might be linked to cross-cultural differences in response biases. Van de Vijver and Poortinga (1997) warned against interpreting intergroup differences in cross-cultural research without examining equivalence. Indeed, several studies have observed substantial differences in response biases such as extreme response styles and acquiescent responding across countries (e.g., Harzing, 2006; Johnson, Kulesa, Cho, & Shavitt, 2005; Smith, 2004). However, further research is necessary to explore the mechanisms underlying these differences in more detail (Johnson et al., 2005). In sum, although the BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was validated across countries, it remains unclear why the strength of the BTAE varies between countries.
Reference group
Alicke and Govorun (2005) suggested that the BTAE decreases when comparing oneself to a “real person” rather than a more abstract concept (i.e., “other Swedes”). Past research has shown that the BTAE was reduced when asking students to compare themselves with “the person sitting next to them” rather than “the average college student” (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vredenburg, 1995). Therefore, Study 2 tested two reference groups with different level of abstraction “Americans” (abstract group), and “your friends” (concrete group). Results showed highly similar results of the BTAE in the two reference groups (63.7% vs. 62.1% above average). Given that participants are thinking about different reference groups when being asked about “my friends” versus “other Americans” and that these groups differ in their level of pro-environmental engagement, it is noticeable that people still overestimate their own pro-environmental engagement in relation to their “friends.”
BTAE as a psychological barrier
Study 4 was designed to test the hypothesis that the BTAE is a psychological barrier for climate change mitigation (Gifford, 2011). This hypothesis was derived from the research on negative spillover effects, predicting that a first moral behavior might “license” a subsequent immoral behavior (e.g., Blanken et al., 2015). It should be noted that research has also demonstrated positive spillover effects, where a first pro-environmental action encourages subsequent pro-environmental actions (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2017; Truelove et al., 2014). This hypothesis is also in line with a self-valuation hypothesis, increasing self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), which has been demonstrated to predict behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). Therefore, one explanation for the weak negative effect on pro-environmental intention is that a dual-process of both negative and positive spillover effects is at work. It could be that the BTAE is fostering pro-environmental intentions for some people while undermining pro-environmental intentions for others. Another explanation for the weak negative effect on intentions is based on the suggestion that the BTAE is a form of availability heuristics (see the following discussion). More specifically, if performing a behavior with a high frequency makes that behavior cognitively available, and thus increases the BTAE, frequency should also moderate the BTAE as a psychological barrier, making high-frequency behaviors more influential than low-frequency behaviors. Past research has identified a number of potential moderators driving the positive versus negative spillovers (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2017; Truelove et al., 2014). Future research should examine if and which moderators might cause the BTAE to foster versus undermine subsequent pro-environmental engagement.
The mechanisms of the BTAE
What are the psychological mechanism driving the BTAE? When analyzing the data from Study 2, the frequency of behavioral engagement was strongly positively correlated with the BTAE effect size. One interpretation of this finding is that performing a specific behavior with a high frequency is interpreted as also performing that behavior more frequently than others. This suggests that the BTAE is driven by the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973), as people may be influenced by how cognitively available a certain behavior is when evaluating relative performance. Future research should further examine if the availability heuristic can explain the BTAE.
Limitations
As a first limitation, cultural comparison was confounded with means of assessing pro-environmental behavior. In the Indian sample, pro-environmental behaviors were assessed by open-ended questions, whereas predefined questions were used in the U.S. and U.K. samples. Could the differences in the BTAE between cultures have been influenced by the measurement method? Although open-ended versus predefined measurements were not used within the same sample, Study 2 reported an effect of 63.7% above the median, which was similar to Study 3 with an effect of 58.7% to 63.2% above the median. Studies 2 and 3 both used a U.S.-American sample, whereas pro-environmental behaviors were assessed by predefined questions in Study 2 and open-ended questions in Study 3, suggesting that the BTAE was not affected by using open-ended compared to predefined questions.
As a second limitation, when testing whether the BTAE affected pro-environmental obligation and intention in Study 4, order effects were not controlled for. Past research has shown that other compensatory behaviors, such as cognitive dissonance reduction strategies, are affected by order (e.g., Fointiat, Somat, & Grosbras, 2011; Gosling, Denizeau, & Oberlé, 2006). It should however be mentioned that these studies find that the first items are more influential than subsequent items. Therefore, in the present study, it would be predicted that obligations are weaker than intention. Yet we observed the opposite pattern, speaking against the influence of order effects. In any case, lack of randomization should be noted as a limitation in Study 4.
Worse than average
There are circumstances moderating or even reversing the effect. The BTAE may be moderated by both desirability and controllability, such as the effect holding for highly desirable traits but not for traits low in desirability, and that the effect is stronger for high controllable than low controllable traits (Alicke, 1985). It has been demonstrated that people view themselves as “worse than average” when evaluating their ability on difficult tasks (Moore, 2007). For example, students’ average rating of the likelihood of winning a trivia contest was 70% when the contest included easy quiz questions, whereas ratings dropped to only 6% for a contest including hard quiz questions (Kruger, 1999). Although we demonstrated the BTAE in nine of 10 pro-environmental behaviors, these were all everyday behaviors that are relatively easy to perform. Future research should test if the BTAE also holds when assessing “harder” pro-environmental actions.
Taken together, this article consistently demonstrates that the BTAE applies to pro-environmental behaviors; nevertheless, the evidence for the BTAE as a psychological barrier for future pro-environmental behaviors is weak and should be explored in future research. BTAE of pro-environmental behaviors was supported across four countries, testing 10 pro-environmental behaviors, and when assessing both closed- and open-ended questions as well as both concrete and abstract reference groups.
An Evolutionary Perspective on Sexual Assault; plus recommendations for improving the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention programs with exercises to reduce the possibility of hostile/reactive aggression in high-risk men
An Evolutionary Perspective on Sexual Assault and Implications for Interventions. Mark Huppin, Neil M. Malamuth, Daniel Linz. Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention pp 17-44, October 19 2019. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-23645-8_2
Abstract: Interventions to reduce sexual assault at institutions of higher learning often have not been shown to be effective and may actually do more harm than good with men at high risk for sexual aggression. We argue that to design more effective interventions, it is essential to incorporate knowledge about the risk factors increasing the likelihood of sexual aggression. The single best predictor of risk for being a perpetrator is being a male and the best predictor of being a victim is being a female. Understanding why this is so may be aided by an approach incorporating evolved psychological mechanisms calibrated by cultural, social, and developmental factors. We consider hypotheses regarding evolved mechanisms for both males and females. We review evidence supporting the hypothesis of specialized mechanisms in women designed to avoid or limit the costs of forced sex. There is also some supportive evidence for the possibility that for males, evolved mechanisms may be calibrated by factors such as perceived negative experiences with women to increase the likelihood of committing sexual aggression. We illustrate such a mechanism by focusing on sexual arousal to forced sex, which may serve as an approach emotion facilitating sexual aggression. In using both evolutionary and proximate analyses, we address not only the question of what characteristics predict male sexual aggression but also why are these the risk factors. Finally, we outline a series of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention programs, including exercises to reduce the possibility of hostile/reactive aggression in high-risk men.
Keywords: Sexual assault Sexual aggression Evolution Psychology Rape Adaptations Specialized mechanisms Hostile masculinity Psychological reactance Prevention programs Interventions
Sexual Aggression in Other Species
Also relevant to EP theories of sexual coercion is evidence of sexual aggression in other species. In fact, physical force, harassment, and other intimidation to obtain sex have been reported in many species. Based on a review of the literature on forced copulation among nonhumans, Lalumière, Harris, Quinsey, and Rice (2005) identified specific characteristics in those species that exhibit sexual coercion. Across all nonhuman species, forced copulation is always perpetrated by males on females. Despite the tendency of females in some species to be assertive in the mating process, the authors could not find one instance of a female forcing sex on a male. Further, males are more likely to target fertile than infertile females for forced copulation, and forced copulation does occasionally result in insemination, fertilization, and offspring. Also, males of most species tend not to engage solely in coercive sexual behaviors. Most males that engage in forced copulation at other times court females. Finally, Lalumière et al. (2005) recognized the role of individual differences in sexual coercion. Certain males are more likely than others to engage in forced copulation, and some males are more successful at sexual coercion than others. They conclude that sexual coercion (particularly in the form of forced copulation) "is a tactic used by some males under some conditions to increase reproduction" (p. 59).
A particularly interesting species to consider is the orangutan, one of the few nonhuman primates for which sexual coercion is common. There is evidence for two distinct classes of orangutan males: large or flanged males, who develop secondary sexual characteristics such as cheek pads and large throat sacs, and small or unflanged males. Both types are sexually mature, though the onset of sexual maturity can be highly variable. Large males typically weigh over 80 kg in the wild, about twice the size of the small males (Knott, 2009; Knott & Kahlenberg, 2007). Although both types resort to forced copulations, they are significantly more often used strategically by small males, who force more than 80% of their total copulations at some orangutan sites (although only about half or fewer of their copulations are forced at other sites, suggesting the role of environmental contingencies such as population density and sex ratio in the incidence of sexual aggression) (Knott, 2009; Knott & Kahlenberg, 2007).
In a study of chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, sexual coercion as long-term intimidation was positively associated with paternity, particularly among high-ranking males, suggesting that it is a strategy used to increase reproductive fitness (Feldman et al., 2014). Sexually coercive tactics toward a female also provide delayed mating benefits in chacma baboons, due in part to the fact that male aggression preferentially targets fertile females (Baniel, Cowlishaw, & Huchard, 2017). As the authors explain, .By repeatedly attacking females in the weeks preceding ovulation, males appear to increase their chances of monopolizing sexual access to females around ovulation, which in turn increases their probability of successful reproduction. (p. 2166). The authors were able to rule out several competing hypotheses for male sexual violence perpetration (e.g., cycling females are more aggressive than noncycling females; females prefer to mate with aggressive males).
Summary and Recommendations for Sexual Assault Interventions
7. Interventions that are effective for women and most men may show .boomerang. effects with high-risk males. In order to effectively change the behavior of these men, prevention programs should consider introducing exercises likely to reduce the possibility of hostile/reactive aggression.
To the extent that recurrent ancestral conditions existed such that for some men sexual coercion contributed to overall reproductive success, the psychological architecture of men today who have experienced relevant developmental adversity may be calibrated in a way that helps motivate sexual assault to obtain sex from an unwilling partner. What.s more, there is a real possibility that many current sexual assault prevention programs may be interacting with the psychological makeup of these high-risk males to create boomerang reactance effects.
Many high-risk men may experience current programs on college campuses as both manipulative and provocative. To these young men such intervention efforts are directed at supporting more positive treatment for a group, undergraduate women, who seem to them to already "get all the breaks." These programs may therefore threaten these men.s self-concept and perceived freedoms. Especially if they see intervention messages as condescending and therefore insulting, they may respond in anger and with greater support for aggression. From an EP perspective, if we conceive of sexual strategies within the framework of a coevolutionary "arms race" between men and women, it is unsurprising that messages suggesting or dictating to sexually coercive young men how they should behave toward women will be ineffective, especially if these men feel that they have something to lose from this (Mealey, 2003).
The evaluations of current sexual assault programs generally have not examined the impact on sexually aggressive men. If currently effective programs work at all for such men, they may do so only indirectly. For example, bystander intervention programs may reduce the ability of high-risk men to carry out an assault by changing the responses of the low-risk, less violent people around them. Any net positive effect, however, is most likely due to a change in the environment in which some assaults occur rather than by having an effect on the high-risk male himself.
An extensive critical review of the scientific literature on prevention efforts on U.S. college campuses was recently published by Newlands and O'Donohue (2016). In order to facilitate improvement, the authors made some recommendations for developing more rigorous research programs. Among them is the idea that attending to "differences between participants can elucidate what factors influence or moderate treatment success or failure" (p. 10). In light of growing evidence of boomerang reactance effects described below, whereby interventions may result in an increased probability that relatively high-risk males will endorse sexually violent attitudes and be willing to behave more aggressively after the intervention compared to before, attending specifically to men's individual risk profiles appears highly important.
For many years, based on repeated findings in various areas (e.g., alcohol consumption, home energy use), reviewers of public health campaigns have called attention to the possibility of adverse boomerang effects. As some reviewers have noted, "An obvious implication is that boomerang effects should be taken into account as one of the potential costs of launching a mass communication campaign" (Ringold, 2012, p. 27). Most relevant to the current focus, boomerang effects have been well documented in areas of interventions designed to change antisocial behaviors, including sexual and nonsexual violence (see, e.g., Byrne & Hart, 2016; Wilson, Linz, Donnerstein, & Stipp, 1992). For example, an analysis of the consequences of a domestic violence campaign that included multiple television and newspaper advertisements demonstrated such unintended effects (Keller, Wilkinson, & Otjen, 2010). One of the stated goals of the program was to change the attitudes and behaviors of potential perpetrators. Only women.s perception of the severity of domestic violence (e.g., "Domestic violence is a serious issue that requires government or police involvement") increased after the campaign, however. Perceptions of the severity of domestic violence actually substantially decreased for the men in the study.
Cardaba, Brinol, Brandle, and Ruiz-SanRoman (2016) conducted research on the effects of anti-violence campaigns in different countries with different age populations. In one study, they found that individuals with relatively higher scores in trait aggressiveness showed a boomerang effect of anti-violence messages since they actually increased their favorability of attitudes toward violence. In contrast, the anti-violence campaigns were effective for those with relatively lower trait aggressiveness. In a second study, the intervention campaign again worked for the low trait-aggressive individuals but not for the high trait-aggressive participants. Another study reporting boomerang effects in the area of violence was conducted by Rivera, Santos, Brandle, and Cardaba (2016). The authors randomly assigned a large number of Italian students to participate in an intervention campaign designed to reduce participants. acceptance of violent video games. Participants were classified according to their relational lifestyle, consisting of four groups: e.g., "communicative" adolescents were more highly engaged in "civic values duties! in their communities than other groups; "meta-reflexive" adolescents had the lowest probability of seeking parents. support; whereas .fractured. adolescents had a higher probability of taking drugs than other groups and of engaging in other relatively delinquent behaviors. The group with a "fractured" or problematic lifestyle showed a boomerang effect, increasing their intent to play violent video games, whereas the other participants reduced their desire as a result of the intervention or there was a null effect. This finding is noteworthy as it is consistent with the idea in EP that sexually aggressive men can be "generalists" or "specialists," with implications for how different men might be expected to respond differently to the same sexual assault prevention program based on group membership.
We could not find any studies that specifically examined the impact of any elaborate interventions on high-risk males. The studies we did find all involved some form of intervention of less than one or two hours. One of these was a systematic experiment using a well-validated laboratory analogue of sexual aggression. In a community sample of American men, Bosson, Parrott, Swan, Kuchynka, and Schramm (2015) found that men low in sexism showed less aggressive tendencies following exposure to messages emphasizing norms of gender equality (e.g., most men approve of "men doing half of the housework and childcare"). Conversely, men high in hostile sexist attitudes showed a boomerang effect of increased sexually aggressive tendencies.
In a study of undergraduate men, Stephens and George (2009) examined the impact of a rape prevention intervention on low- vs. high-risk men. Risk level was determined by whether individuals had reported previously engaging in sexually aggressive behavior. The researchers found that men in general showed reductions in rape myth acceptance and an increase in victim empathy at a 5-week follow-up. Subgroup analyses, however, indicated that low-risk men were responsible for these findings. High-risk men showed no reliable attitudinal changes from the intervention. More alarmingly, high-risk men in the intervention group were more likely at follow- up to report higher sexually coercive behaviors than were high-risk men in a control group, although the sample size was small.
In another study that presented men a bystander sexual violence prevention program consisting of multifaceted training and skills development, outcome measures of rape myth acceptance and sexually coercive behavioral intentions were reduced among low-risk men (Elias-Lambert & Black, 2016). The program was relatively ineffective with high-risk men, however, leading the authors to conclude that .high-risk males may require a different type of prevention program that can help change the stubborn attitudes and habits they have developed. (p. 3229).
In order to avoid the possibility of boomerang effects, prevention programs should consider introducing exercises likely to reduce the perception of women as out-group threat. Using techniques such as self-affirmation and identity verification may be effective in this regard. These could be incorporated as part of a more comprehensive program for high-risk males, prior to the introduction of specific educational interventions. By moderating perceptions of out-group threat, these experiences can serve to mitigate hostile reactance.
According to self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), individuals have a fundamental motivation to protect their personal image. Self-threatening information is likely to elicit defensive responses such as rejecting the information, presenting counterarguments, or expressing resistance to change in order to restore one.s self-integrity. When one.s self-integrity is supported via self-affirmation, however, one can more carefully consider views and information that otherwise would be too threatening to accept (Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Sherman, 2013).
Self-affirmations have been found to increase positive other-directed feelings (Crocker, Niiya, & Mischkowski, 2008). They have been shown to have physiological bases for their desired effects by buffering neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses (Creswell et al., 2005) and by activating relevant brain-reward systems (Dutcher et al., 2016). By reducing defensive information processing, self-affirmations can increase the effectiveness of educational campaigns (Cohen, Aronson, & Steele, 2000) via how campaigns are framed and embodied. To our knowledge, existing efforts to educate undergraduate students, and high-risk men specifically, about sexual violence prevention have not included these self-image maintenance processes. Because of this, these programs are more likely to have unintended, counterproductive consequences.
Similarly, research on identity verification has found that when the set of meanings in a situation does not match people.s internal standards, and someone else does not confirm or verify their identities, they can experience negative emotional arousal such as hostility (Cast & Burke, 2002). If the lack of verification persists, an individual ultimately may resort to tactics of physical or sexual aggression over others in order to reassert control over the environment (Stets, 1992).
Many current sexual assault prevention programs contain admonishments that may create hostility and lead to a diminished sense of control for high-risk men, such that a resort to sexual violence to compensate for this loss is possible. Identity-verification can serve to reduce or eliminate such backlash responses by creating feelings of positive arousal including high self-esteem and mastery (Burke & Stets, 1999; Cast & Burke, 2002), setting the stage, e.g., for approach behaviors to programmatic information such as increased perspective taking. Research from identity theory suggests that verifying high-risk men in areas affiliated with their aggressive personality, such as masculinity, athletics, or a personal identity related to the degree to which they see themselves as more or less controlling may be most likely to create the conditions for attitudinal and behavioral change (Stets & Burke, 1994), as part of a comprehensive educational program for change.
Abstract: Interventions to reduce sexual assault at institutions of higher learning often have not been shown to be effective and may actually do more harm than good with men at high risk for sexual aggression. We argue that to design more effective interventions, it is essential to incorporate knowledge about the risk factors increasing the likelihood of sexual aggression. The single best predictor of risk for being a perpetrator is being a male and the best predictor of being a victim is being a female. Understanding why this is so may be aided by an approach incorporating evolved psychological mechanisms calibrated by cultural, social, and developmental factors. We consider hypotheses regarding evolved mechanisms for both males and females. We review evidence supporting the hypothesis of specialized mechanisms in women designed to avoid or limit the costs of forced sex. There is also some supportive evidence for the possibility that for males, evolved mechanisms may be calibrated by factors such as perceived negative experiences with women to increase the likelihood of committing sexual aggression. We illustrate such a mechanism by focusing on sexual arousal to forced sex, which may serve as an approach emotion facilitating sexual aggression. In using both evolutionary and proximate analyses, we address not only the question of what characteristics predict male sexual aggression but also why are these the risk factors. Finally, we outline a series of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention programs, including exercises to reduce the possibility of hostile/reactive aggression in high-risk men.
Keywords: Sexual assault Sexual aggression Evolution Psychology Rape Adaptations Specialized mechanisms Hostile masculinity Psychological reactance Prevention programs Interventions
Sexual Aggression in Other Species
Also relevant to EP theories of sexual coercion is evidence of sexual aggression in other species. In fact, physical force, harassment, and other intimidation to obtain sex have been reported in many species. Based on a review of the literature on forced copulation among nonhumans, Lalumière, Harris, Quinsey, and Rice (2005) identified specific characteristics in those species that exhibit sexual coercion. Across all nonhuman species, forced copulation is always perpetrated by males on females. Despite the tendency of females in some species to be assertive in the mating process, the authors could not find one instance of a female forcing sex on a male. Further, males are more likely to target fertile than infertile females for forced copulation, and forced copulation does occasionally result in insemination, fertilization, and offspring. Also, males of most species tend not to engage solely in coercive sexual behaviors. Most males that engage in forced copulation at other times court females. Finally, Lalumière et al. (2005) recognized the role of individual differences in sexual coercion. Certain males are more likely than others to engage in forced copulation, and some males are more successful at sexual coercion than others. They conclude that sexual coercion (particularly in the form of forced copulation) "is a tactic used by some males under some conditions to increase reproduction" (p. 59).
A particularly interesting species to consider is the orangutan, one of the few nonhuman primates for which sexual coercion is common. There is evidence for two distinct classes of orangutan males: large or flanged males, who develop secondary sexual characteristics such as cheek pads and large throat sacs, and small or unflanged males. Both types are sexually mature, though the onset of sexual maturity can be highly variable. Large males typically weigh over 80 kg in the wild, about twice the size of the small males (Knott, 2009; Knott & Kahlenberg, 2007). Although both types resort to forced copulations, they are significantly more often used strategically by small males, who force more than 80% of their total copulations at some orangutan sites (although only about half or fewer of their copulations are forced at other sites, suggesting the role of environmental contingencies such as population density and sex ratio in the incidence of sexual aggression) (Knott, 2009; Knott & Kahlenberg, 2007).
In a study of chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, sexual coercion as long-term intimidation was positively associated with paternity, particularly among high-ranking males, suggesting that it is a strategy used to increase reproductive fitness (Feldman et al., 2014). Sexually coercive tactics toward a female also provide delayed mating benefits in chacma baboons, due in part to the fact that male aggression preferentially targets fertile females (Baniel, Cowlishaw, & Huchard, 2017). As the authors explain, .By repeatedly attacking females in the weeks preceding ovulation, males appear to increase their chances of monopolizing sexual access to females around ovulation, which in turn increases their probability of successful reproduction. (p. 2166). The authors were able to rule out several competing hypotheses for male sexual violence perpetration (e.g., cycling females are more aggressive than noncycling females; females prefer to mate with aggressive males).
Summary and Recommendations for Sexual Assault Interventions
7. Interventions that are effective for women and most men may show .boomerang. effects with high-risk males. In order to effectively change the behavior of these men, prevention programs should consider introducing exercises likely to reduce the possibility of hostile/reactive aggression.
To the extent that recurrent ancestral conditions existed such that for some men sexual coercion contributed to overall reproductive success, the psychological architecture of men today who have experienced relevant developmental adversity may be calibrated in a way that helps motivate sexual assault to obtain sex from an unwilling partner. What.s more, there is a real possibility that many current sexual assault prevention programs may be interacting with the psychological makeup of these high-risk males to create boomerang reactance effects.
Many high-risk men may experience current programs on college campuses as both manipulative and provocative. To these young men such intervention efforts are directed at supporting more positive treatment for a group, undergraduate women, who seem to them to already "get all the breaks." These programs may therefore threaten these men.s self-concept and perceived freedoms. Especially if they see intervention messages as condescending and therefore insulting, they may respond in anger and with greater support for aggression. From an EP perspective, if we conceive of sexual strategies within the framework of a coevolutionary "arms race" between men and women, it is unsurprising that messages suggesting or dictating to sexually coercive young men how they should behave toward women will be ineffective, especially if these men feel that they have something to lose from this (Mealey, 2003).
The evaluations of current sexual assault programs generally have not examined the impact on sexually aggressive men. If currently effective programs work at all for such men, they may do so only indirectly. For example, bystander intervention programs may reduce the ability of high-risk men to carry out an assault by changing the responses of the low-risk, less violent people around them. Any net positive effect, however, is most likely due to a change in the environment in which some assaults occur rather than by having an effect on the high-risk male himself.
An extensive critical review of the scientific literature on prevention efforts on U.S. college campuses was recently published by Newlands and O'Donohue (2016). In order to facilitate improvement, the authors made some recommendations for developing more rigorous research programs. Among them is the idea that attending to "differences between participants can elucidate what factors influence or moderate treatment success or failure" (p. 10). In light of growing evidence of boomerang reactance effects described below, whereby interventions may result in an increased probability that relatively high-risk males will endorse sexually violent attitudes and be willing to behave more aggressively after the intervention compared to before, attending specifically to men's individual risk profiles appears highly important.
For many years, based on repeated findings in various areas (e.g., alcohol consumption, home energy use), reviewers of public health campaigns have called attention to the possibility of adverse boomerang effects. As some reviewers have noted, "An obvious implication is that boomerang effects should be taken into account as one of the potential costs of launching a mass communication campaign" (Ringold, 2012, p. 27). Most relevant to the current focus, boomerang effects have been well documented in areas of interventions designed to change antisocial behaviors, including sexual and nonsexual violence (see, e.g., Byrne & Hart, 2016; Wilson, Linz, Donnerstein, & Stipp, 1992). For example, an analysis of the consequences of a domestic violence campaign that included multiple television and newspaper advertisements demonstrated such unintended effects (Keller, Wilkinson, & Otjen, 2010). One of the stated goals of the program was to change the attitudes and behaviors of potential perpetrators. Only women.s perception of the severity of domestic violence (e.g., "Domestic violence is a serious issue that requires government or police involvement") increased after the campaign, however. Perceptions of the severity of domestic violence actually substantially decreased for the men in the study.
Cardaba, Brinol, Brandle, and Ruiz-SanRoman (2016) conducted research on the effects of anti-violence campaigns in different countries with different age populations. In one study, they found that individuals with relatively higher scores in trait aggressiveness showed a boomerang effect of anti-violence messages since they actually increased their favorability of attitudes toward violence. In contrast, the anti-violence campaigns were effective for those with relatively lower trait aggressiveness. In a second study, the intervention campaign again worked for the low trait-aggressive individuals but not for the high trait-aggressive participants. Another study reporting boomerang effects in the area of violence was conducted by Rivera, Santos, Brandle, and Cardaba (2016). The authors randomly assigned a large number of Italian students to participate in an intervention campaign designed to reduce participants. acceptance of violent video games. Participants were classified according to their relational lifestyle, consisting of four groups: e.g., "communicative" adolescents were more highly engaged in "civic values duties! in their communities than other groups; "meta-reflexive" adolescents had the lowest probability of seeking parents. support; whereas .fractured. adolescents had a higher probability of taking drugs than other groups and of engaging in other relatively delinquent behaviors. The group with a "fractured" or problematic lifestyle showed a boomerang effect, increasing their intent to play violent video games, whereas the other participants reduced their desire as a result of the intervention or there was a null effect. This finding is noteworthy as it is consistent with the idea in EP that sexually aggressive men can be "generalists" or "specialists," with implications for how different men might be expected to respond differently to the same sexual assault prevention program based on group membership.
We could not find any studies that specifically examined the impact of any elaborate interventions on high-risk males. The studies we did find all involved some form of intervention of less than one or two hours. One of these was a systematic experiment using a well-validated laboratory analogue of sexual aggression. In a community sample of American men, Bosson, Parrott, Swan, Kuchynka, and Schramm (2015) found that men low in sexism showed less aggressive tendencies following exposure to messages emphasizing norms of gender equality (e.g., most men approve of "men doing half of the housework and childcare"). Conversely, men high in hostile sexist attitudes showed a boomerang effect of increased sexually aggressive tendencies.
In a study of undergraduate men, Stephens and George (2009) examined the impact of a rape prevention intervention on low- vs. high-risk men. Risk level was determined by whether individuals had reported previously engaging in sexually aggressive behavior. The researchers found that men in general showed reductions in rape myth acceptance and an increase in victim empathy at a 5-week follow-up. Subgroup analyses, however, indicated that low-risk men were responsible for these findings. High-risk men showed no reliable attitudinal changes from the intervention. More alarmingly, high-risk men in the intervention group were more likely at follow- up to report higher sexually coercive behaviors than were high-risk men in a control group, although the sample size was small.
In another study that presented men a bystander sexual violence prevention program consisting of multifaceted training and skills development, outcome measures of rape myth acceptance and sexually coercive behavioral intentions were reduced among low-risk men (Elias-Lambert & Black, 2016). The program was relatively ineffective with high-risk men, however, leading the authors to conclude that .high-risk males may require a different type of prevention program that can help change the stubborn attitudes and habits they have developed. (p. 3229).
In order to avoid the possibility of boomerang effects, prevention programs should consider introducing exercises likely to reduce the perception of women as out-group threat. Using techniques such as self-affirmation and identity verification may be effective in this regard. These could be incorporated as part of a more comprehensive program for high-risk males, prior to the introduction of specific educational interventions. By moderating perceptions of out-group threat, these experiences can serve to mitigate hostile reactance.
According to self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), individuals have a fundamental motivation to protect their personal image. Self-threatening information is likely to elicit defensive responses such as rejecting the information, presenting counterarguments, or expressing resistance to change in order to restore one.s self-integrity. When one.s self-integrity is supported via self-affirmation, however, one can more carefully consider views and information that otherwise would be too threatening to accept (Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Sherman, 2013).
Self-affirmations have been found to increase positive other-directed feelings (Crocker, Niiya, & Mischkowski, 2008). They have been shown to have physiological bases for their desired effects by buffering neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses (Creswell et al., 2005) and by activating relevant brain-reward systems (Dutcher et al., 2016). By reducing defensive information processing, self-affirmations can increase the effectiveness of educational campaigns (Cohen, Aronson, & Steele, 2000) via how campaigns are framed and embodied. To our knowledge, existing efforts to educate undergraduate students, and high-risk men specifically, about sexual violence prevention have not included these self-image maintenance processes. Because of this, these programs are more likely to have unintended, counterproductive consequences.
Similarly, research on identity verification has found that when the set of meanings in a situation does not match people.s internal standards, and someone else does not confirm or verify their identities, they can experience negative emotional arousal such as hostility (Cast & Burke, 2002). If the lack of verification persists, an individual ultimately may resort to tactics of physical or sexual aggression over others in order to reassert control over the environment (Stets, 1992).
Many current sexual assault prevention programs contain admonishments that may create hostility and lead to a diminished sense of control for high-risk men, such that a resort to sexual violence to compensate for this loss is possible. Identity-verification can serve to reduce or eliminate such backlash responses by creating feelings of positive arousal including high self-esteem and mastery (Burke & Stets, 1999; Cast & Burke, 2002), setting the stage, e.g., for approach behaviors to programmatic information such as increased perspective taking. Research from identity theory suggests that verifying high-risk men in areas affiliated with their aggressive personality, such as masculinity, athletics, or a personal identity related to the degree to which they see themselves as more or less controlling may be most likely to create the conditions for attitudinal and behavioral change (Stets & Burke, 1994), as part of a comprehensive educational program for change.
Bayesian brain theories suggest that perception, action and cognition arise as creatures minimise the mismatch between their expectations and reality
Yon, Daniel, Cecilia Heyes, and Clare Press. 2019. “Beliefs and Desires in the Predictive Brain.” PsyArXiv. November 18. doi:10.31234/osf.io/hv4bs (osf.io/hv4bs)
Abstract: Bayesian brain theories suggest that perception, action and cognition arise as creatures minimise the mismatch between their expectations and reality. This principle could unify cognitive science with the broader natural sciences, but leave key elements of cognition and behaviour unexplained.
Check also Yon, Daniel, Carl Bunce, and Clare Press. 2019. “Illusions of Control Without Delusions of Grandeur.” PsyArXiv. November 21. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zk4vg
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Why do we do anything at all? In everyday life we tend to explain the behaviour of ourselves and other creatures in terms of beliefs and desires. For example, we might say that a rat pulls a lever or a scientist runs an experiment because they believe that certain outcomes will ensue (i.e., a piece of food or a piece of data) and because these are outcomes they desire (e.g., because they are hungry or curious).
The idea that action is motivated by belief-like and desire-like representations – respectively defining which states of the world are most probable and most valuable (see Box 1) – is also a deep feature of many programmes of work across the cognitive sciences. For example, cognitive models suggest goal-directed action depends on separate associations between actions and outcomes (instrumental beliefs) and outcomes and values (incentives)1,2. A similar distinction is fundamental to models of economic choice, where decisions are thought to reflect a combination of utilities (how good is this option?) and probabilities (how certain am I to obtain it?)3.
However, in recent decades cognitive scientists have been enticed by the possibility that the familiar double act of beliefs and desires can be replaced by theories that explain behaviour using only one kind of internal state – ‘prediction’ (see Fig. 1;4). These predictive processing accounts5 assume that the brain acts as a model of the extracranial world, optimised to fit information arriving at the senses. According to this view, the brain is structured in a hierarchical way such that ‘higher’ cortical areas embody hypotheses about the activity expected in ‘lower’ areas, which in turn send information up the processing hierarchy signalling the mismatch or ‘error’ between prediction and reality. This structure allows the brain to optimise its fit to the outside world through two kinds of process or ‘inference’. The first is perceptual inference, where incoming sensory signals are used to adjust hypotheses at higher levels, such that the hypotheses more closely match the outside world. The second is active inference, where strong top-down predictions engage muscles and organs to drive action, changing states of the body and the world such that they conform with the prior predictions. More simply put, the brain can either revise its predictions to match the world or change the world to make the predictions come true.
Proponents of this view4 suggest that these models leave us with a ‘desert landscape’ view of cognition, where mental states once thought to be crucial in explaining behaviour – such as goals, drives and desires – are boiled down to predictions. Under this view “desired outcomes [are] simply…those that an agent believes, a priori, it will obtain”6. Here, the hungry rat presses the lever because it expects itself to press, since it expects not to be hungry in the future.
One particularly attractive feature of this predictive processing scheme is its potential to integrate cognitive science with other life and social sciences through a common set of principles. For example, it can be shown that any plausible biological system – whether brain, bacterium or birch tree – behaves as though it possesses a predictive model of its environment, and acts in ways that improve the fit between this model and the outside world7,8. More recently, it has been suggested that the same mathematical principles can explain cultural evolution, with ‘cultural ensembles’ equipping their members with shared predictions about the outside world, the contents of which are adjusted in response to cultural prediction errors9. The idea that a range of natural phenomena, on a range of scales, can be understood as prediction-making, error-minimising systems commends predictive processing models to “unity of science” enthusiasts. These models are a boon for scientists who seek continuity between the principles explaining human and animal behaviour and those explaining the rest of the natural world.
However, the unifying potential of predictive processing models may come at a cost to explanatory power. There may still be good reasons for the cognitive scientist to retain concepts of belief-like and desire-like states in their theoretical arsenal. For example, predictive processing models of active inference assume that we act by generating (false) predictions about the states of our body (e.g., my hand is over there) and enslaving peripheral reflexes to make the prediction come true (i.e., move it). While this formulation provides an elegant account of how motor commands are generated and unpacked in the spinal cord, and there would be little dispute that goals are achieved through error minimisation processes, a key ingredient in this scheme is the assumption that agents suspend perception of their actions until their predictions are realised10. This assumption is required because one state plays the role of belief and desire – I cannot simultaneously represent with one state that my hand is by my side and that I would like it to be grasping the mug. Therefore, it would appear that these incarnations of the model are difficult to reconcile with evidence that agents can simultaneously act and perceptually monitor their actions as they unfold – for example, when adapting to unexpected perturbations in a visually-guided reaching movement11 . It is unclear that there is a straightforward solution to this problem. This kind of sensory-guided goal-directed action is compatible with there being some levels in the hierarchy that do not distinguish between belief-like and desire-like information1,11 but not with the absence of this distinction at all levels.
Retaining the distinction between belief-like and desire-like states may also help clinical scientists explain atypical aspects of action. For example, neuropsychiatric work has shown that addicts can expect drugs to be unrewarding, yet still feel strong compulsions to consume them – with expectations about the pleasantness of consumption (‘liking’) and about one’s future actions (‘wanting’) subserved by dissociable mechanisms12. A similar distinction may be important in obsessive compulsive disorder, where patients feel strong urges to perform actions they believe to be causally impotent13. Such experiences are difficult to explain without distinguishing desire-like and belief-like mechanisms (see Box 1).
Intriguingly, some recent predictive processing models may be suggesting rejection of the desert landscape view of cognition, by emphasising that agents like us can act in ways that minimise future prediction errors14. These temporally-deep models entail agents that have separate predictions about states of the world and predictions about plausible actions they could perform. This feature could allow for the reintroduction of the distinction between beliefs and desires. However, if doing so, proponents of predictive processing must also accept that the aim of unifying scientific explanation is only partially achieved. The desert landscape of cognition is not as bare as it seems, and we must accept that there is a discontinuity between different types of mental state, and between error-minimising systems that possess predictions about the future (e.g., animals) and those that do not (e.g., viruses).
In conclusion, prominent predictive processing models have suggested it is possible to do away with traditional concepts of belief and desire, explaining all cognition and behaviour in terms of predictions. This account holds promise for uniting the study of the mind with the study of the natural world, given the diverse number of natural systems that can be thought of as ‘error-minimisers’. However, abandoning these concepts may limit cognitive science’s ability to explain the subtleties of motivated action in health and disease. Though both beliefs and desires could be crafted from the sands of a desert landscape, the cognitive scientist may still find them to be as different as concrete and glass.
-----Full text, graphs, references, etc., at the link above
Abstract: Bayesian brain theories suggest that perception, action and cognition arise as creatures minimise the mismatch between their expectations and reality. This principle could unify cognitive science with the broader natural sciences, but leave key elements of cognition and behaviour unexplained.
Check also Yon, Daniel, Carl Bunce, and Clare Press. 2019. “Illusions of Control Without Delusions of Grandeur.” PsyArXiv. November 21. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zk4vg
Abstract: We frequently experience feelings of agency over events we do not objectively influence – so-called ‘illusions of control’. These illusions have prompted widespread claims that we can be insensitive to objective relationships between actions and outcomes, and instead rely on grandiose beliefs about our abilities. However, these illusory biases could instead arise if we are highly sensitive to action-outcome correlations, but attribute agency when such correlations emerge simply by chance. We motion-tracked participants while they made agency judgements about a cursor that could be yoked to their actions or follow an independent trajectory. A combination of signal detection analysis, reverse correlation methods and computational modelling indeed demonstrated that ‘illusions’ of control could emerge solely from sensitivity to spurious action-outcome correlations. Counterintuitively, this suggests that illusions of control could arise because agents have excellent insight into the relationships between actions and outcomes in a world where causal relationships are not perfectly deterministic.And Now you see it: Our brains predict the outcomes of our actions, shaping reality into what we expect. That’s why we see what we believe. Daniel Yon. Aeon Nov 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/how-our-brain-sculpts-experience-in-line-with-our-expectations
---
Why do we do anything at all? In everyday life we tend to explain the behaviour of ourselves and other creatures in terms of beliefs and desires. For example, we might say that a rat pulls a lever or a scientist runs an experiment because they believe that certain outcomes will ensue (i.e., a piece of food or a piece of data) and because these are outcomes they desire (e.g., because they are hungry or curious).
The idea that action is motivated by belief-like and desire-like representations – respectively defining which states of the world are most probable and most valuable (see Box 1) – is also a deep feature of many programmes of work across the cognitive sciences. For example, cognitive models suggest goal-directed action depends on separate associations between actions and outcomes (instrumental beliefs) and outcomes and values (incentives)1,2. A similar distinction is fundamental to models of economic choice, where decisions are thought to reflect a combination of utilities (how good is this option?) and probabilities (how certain am I to obtain it?)3.
However, in recent decades cognitive scientists have been enticed by the possibility that the familiar double act of beliefs and desires can be replaced by theories that explain behaviour using only one kind of internal state – ‘prediction’ (see Fig. 1;4). These predictive processing accounts5 assume that the brain acts as a model of the extracranial world, optimised to fit information arriving at the senses. According to this view, the brain is structured in a hierarchical way such that ‘higher’ cortical areas embody hypotheses about the activity expected in ‘lower’ areas, which in turn send information up the processing hierarchy signalling the mismatch or ‘error’ between prediction and reality. This structure allows the brain to optimise its fit to the outside world through two kinds of process or ‘inference’. The first is perceptual inference, where incoming sensory signals are used to adjust hypotheses at higher levels, such that the hypotheses more closely match the outside world. The second is active inference, where strong top-down predictions engage muscles and organs to drive action, changing states of the body and the world such that they conform with the prior predictions. More simply put, the brain can either revise its predictions to match the world or change the world to make the predictions come true.
Proponents of this view4 suggest that these models leave us with a ‘desert landscape’ view of cognition, where mental states once thought to be crucial in explaining behaviour – such as goals, drives and desires – are boiled down to predictions. Under this view “desired outcomes [are] simply…those that an agent believes, a priori, it will obtain”6. Here, the hungry rat presses the lever because it expects itself to press, since it expects not to be hungry in the future.
One particularly attractive feature of this predictive processing scheme is its potential to integrate cognitive science with other life and social sciences through a common set of principles. For example, it can be shown that any plausible biological system – whether brain, bacterium or birch tree – behaves as though it possesses a predictive model of its environment, and acts in ways that improve the fit between this model and the outside world7,8. More recently, it has been suggested that the same mathematical principles can explain cultural evolution, with ‘cultural ensembles’ equipping their members with shared predictions about the outside world, the contents of which are adjusted in response to cultural prediction errors9. The idea that a range of natural phenomena, on a range of scales, can be understood as prediction-making, error-minimising systems commends predictive processing models to “unity of science” enthusiasts. These models are a boon for scientists who seek continuity between the principles explaining human and animal behaviour and those explaining the rest of the natural world.
However, the unifying potential of predictive processing models may come at a cost to explanatory power. There may still be good reasons for the cognitive scientist to retain concepts of belief-like and desire-like states in their theoretical arsenal. For example, predictive processing models of active inference assume that we act by generating (false) predictions about the states of our body (e.g., my hand is over there) and enslaving peripheral reflexes to make the prediction come true (i.e., move it). While this formulation provides an elegant account of how motor commands are generated and unpacked in the spinal cord, and there would be little dispute that goals are achieved through error minimisation processes, a key ingredient in this scheme is the assumption that agents suspend perception of their actions until their predictions are realised10. This assumption is required because one state plays the role of belief and desire – I cannot simultaneously represent with one state that my hand is by my side and that I would like it to be grasping the mug. Therefore, it would appear that these incarnations of the model are difficult to reconcile with evidence that agents can simultaneously act and perceptually monitor their actions as they unfold – for example, when adapting to unexpected perturbations in a visually-guided reaching movement11 . It is unclear that there is a straightforward solution to this problem. This kind of sensory-guided goal-directed action is compatible with there being some levels in the hierarchy that do not distinguish between belief-like and desire-like information1,11 but not with the absence of this distinction at all levels.
Retaining the distinction between belief-like and desire-like states may also help clinical scientists explain atypical aspects of action. For example, neuropsychiatric work has shown that addicts can expect drugs to be unrewarding, yet still feel strong compulsions to consume them – with expectations about the pleasantness of consumption (‘liking’) and about one’s future actions (‘wanting’) subserved by dissociable mechanisms12. A similar distinction may be important in obsessive compulsive disorder, where patients feel strong urges to perform actions they believe to be causally impotent13. Such experiences are difficult to explain without distinguishing desire-like and belief-like mechanisms (see Box 1).
Intriguingly, some recent predictive processing models may be suggesting rejection of the desert landscape view of cognition, by emphasising that agents like us can act in ways that minimise future prediction errors14. These temporally-deep models entail agents that have separate predictions about states of the world and predictions about plausible actions they could perform. This feature could allow for the reintroduction of the distinction between beliefs and desires. However, if doing so, proponents of predictive processing must also accept that the aim of unifying scientific explanation is only partially achieved. The desert landscape of cognition is not as bare as it seems, and we must accept that there is a discontinuity between different types of mental state, and between error-minimising systems that possess predictions about the future (e.g., animals) and those that do not (e.g., viruses).
In conclusion, prominent predictive processing models have suggested it is possible to do away with traditional concepts of belief and desire, explaining all cognition and behaviour in terms of predictions. This account holds promise for uniting the study of the mind with the study of the natural world, given the diverse number of natural systems that can be thought of as ‘error-minimisers’. However, abandoning these concepts may limit cognitive science’s ability to explain the subtleties of motivated action in health and disease. Though both beliefs and desires could be crafted from the sands of a desert landscape, the cognitive scientist may still find them to be as different as concrete and glass.
-----Full text, graphs, references, etc., at the link above
Higher (vs. lower) status decreased men's attraction to moderately-attractive women, whereas it increased men's attraction to highly-attractive women; women did not exhibit this pattern of reactions to either women or men
Ambivalent attraction: Beauty determines whether men romantically desire or dismiss high status women. Alexandra N.Fisher, Danu Anthony Stinson. Personality and Individual Differences, November 8 2019, 109681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109681
Abstract: We propose that physical attractiveness determines whether heterosexual men desire or dismiss romance with high-status women. We tested this ambivalent attraction hypothesis in three increasingly realistic experiments – one involving a hypothetical social interaction (N = 214) and two involving potential and actual interactions with confederates (Ns = 332 and 181). In each experiment, heterosexual men encountered a moderately-attractive or highly-attractive woman who aspired to (or held) a low-status or high-status job. Then they rated their attraction to the woman (Experiments 1 to 3) and were given the opportunity to initiate additional social contact with the woman (Experiments 2 and 3). As predicted, a meta-analysis across all three experiments revealed that higher (vs. lower) status decreased men's attraction to moderately-attractive women (d = -0.20), whereas higher (vs. lower) status increased men's attraction to highly-attractive women (d = 0.47). Women did not exhibit this pattern of reactions to either women or men. These results demonstrate the importance of ecological validity and interactive effects in attraction research.
Abstract: We propose that physical attractiveness determines whether heterosexual men desire or dismiss romance with high-status women. We tested this ambivalent attraction hypothesis in three increasingly realistic experiments – one involving a hypothetical social interaction (N = 214) and two involving potential and actual interactions with confederates (Ns = 332 and 181). In each experiment, heterosexual men encountered a moderately-attractive or highly-attractive woman who aspired to (or held) a low-status or high-status job. Then they rated their attraction to the woman (Experiments 1 to 3) and were given the opportunity to initiate additional social contact with the woman (Experiments 2 and 3). As predicted, a meta-analysis across all three experiments revealed that higher (vs. lower) status decreased men's attraction to moderately-attractive women (d = -0.20), whereas higher (vs. lower) status increased men's attraction to highly-attractive women (d = 0.47). Women did not exhibit this pattern of reactions to either women or men. These results demonstrate the importance of ecological validity and interactive effects in attraction research.
We anticipate greater intrasexual aggression toward women dressed revealingly versus modestly, especially if targets are attractive; & women strategically damp the display of those dresses when aggression risk is greatest
Women’s Strategic Defenses Against Same-Sex Aggression: Evidence From Sartorial Behavior. Jaimie Arona Krems, Ashley M. Rankin, Stefanie B. Northover. Social Psychological and Personality Science, November 20, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619882028
Abstract: Women’s intrasexual competition has received significant attention only in the last decades, with even less work investigating women’s defenses against such aggression. Yet, we should expect that women can (a) grasp which perceptually-salient cues evoke same-sex aggression and (b) strategically damp the display of (some of) those cues when aggression risk is greatest, thereby avoiding the potentially high costs of victimization. Women selectively aggress against women displaying cues of sexual permissiveness (e.g., revealing dress) and/or desirability (e.g., physical attractiveness). We find that (a) women (and men) anticipate greater intrasexual aggression toward women dressed revealingly versus modestly, especially if targets are attractive. Employing behavioral and self-report measures, we also find (b) women create outfits baring less skin, select more modest clothing, and intend to dress less revealingly to encounter other women, flexibly damping permissiveness cues depending on individual features (physical attractiveness) and situational features (being a newcomer) that amplify aggression risk.
Keywords: evolutionary psychology, intrasexual aggression, female sociality, female aggression defenses
General Discussion
In four experiments, we find (1) women (and men) expect
women—and especially physically attractive women—to
evoke greater indirect (but not direct) intrasexual aggression
when revealingly versus modestly dressed; (2) women dress
more modestly for encountering same- versus mixed-sex
groups—across contexts (professional, social); (3) more physically
attractive women, who may be at greater risk of incurring
intrasexual aggression, demonstrate an exaggerated tendency
to do this; and (4) this effect is apparent only when such women
dress to meet a prospective (but not existing) female friend.
Findings are consistent with theorizing that women are not only
aware that certain perceptually-salient cues (e.g., revealing
clothes, physical attractiveness) render them more likely targets
of intrasexual aggression, but also that women might thus
seek to avoid such aggression by strategically manipulating
their appearance—specifically, by damping their outfit provocativeness.
Importantly, this damping is flexibly engaged when
aggression risk is highest: by individuals who may already be
frequent targets (physically attractive women), and in situations
when aggression is more likely (when women are
newcomers).
Our focus on women’s interactions with other women was,
in part, to address the fact that the majority of research on
women’s clothing and consumption has focused on women’s
male audiences and the possible benefits associated with
attracting such audiences (e.g., Buss, 1988; Durante et al.,
2011; Elliott et al., 2013; Haselton et al., 2007; Padza, Elliott,
& Greitemeyer, 2012; Saad, 2013; Sacco, Bermond, & Young,
2016; but see Blake, Fourati, & Brooks, 2018; Hudders, De
Backer, Fisher, & Vyncke, 2014). We would not argue that
other women are always the sole intended audience for
women’s sartorial cues and/or signals, and even when other
women are the intended audience, we would not expect that
women’s sartorial choices are always calibrated only toward
avoiding intrasexual aggression. Rather, because attracting and
maintaining same-sex friends can confer numerous important
benefits for women (e.g., Campbell, 2002), future work could
benefit from exploring how women might manipulate their
appearances to establish and maintain same-sex friendships—
as well as to avoid same-sex aggression. For example, donning
the baggy sorority t-shirts and short shorts common to young
women on some college campuses may communicate not only
the wearer’s on-campus status but also her dedication to her
coalition.
Similarly, we do not assume that attracting the attention of
male audiences yields only opportunities (and not also threats).
Our data imply that women are attuned to the possible benefits
and costs of male attention, damping provocative dress when
encountering prospective male friends (but not romantic partners),
whose unwanted sexual interest could be threatening.
In all, findings suggest that women’s sartorial behavior is
attuned to multiple factors, including women’s own attractiveness,
the social context, and several audience features (e.g.,
audience gender composition, familiarity with their audience).
Future work might further investigate these and other nuances
(e.g., Glick, Larsen, Johnson, & Branstiter, 2005).
This work adds to literature suggesting that features cuing
women’s intentions to attract men (e.g., provocative dress) can
evoke aggression, but so too can features cuing women’s ability
to attract men (e.g., physical attractiveness). This implies
that some women might attract intrasexual aggression without
having engaged in behavior to prompt it. That is, women might
be aggressed against for being competitive (e.g., for desirable
romantic partners), even if those women were not actively
competing. One might speculate that, in contrast, men are
unlikely to evoke intrasexual aggression without having
actively provoked it. Whereas past work has uncovered sex differences
in tactics of intrasexual aggression, future work might
benefit from systematically exploring possible sex differences
in what features evoke intrasexual aggression.
We also note some limitations. One might speculate that stimulus
effects drove the results of Experiment 1. This is
possible; Experiment 1 used one stimulus per condition, and
this can be problematic for issues of validity and generalizability.
Perhaps somewhat mitigating these concerns, findings were
consistent with previous research examining actual aggression
toward those stimuli (Vaillancourt & Sharma, 2011); women
were more indirectly aggressive to an average-weight, revealingly
(versus modestly) dressed target, and we find that people
expect the average-weight, revealingly dressed target to
receive heightened intrasexual indirect aggression. Additionally,
we knowingly confounded sex composition and social
context in Experiment 2, which could also have suffered from
demand characteristics given its within-subjects design. To
address this, Experiment 3 conceptually replicated Experiment
2, setting sex composition orthogonal to social context,
and using a between-subjects design.
Check also Women made more negative attributions about, & experienced diminished desire to affiliate with, female targets wearing (vs. not wearing) cosmetics. This penalty was specific to female observers, mediated by decreases in perceived trustworthiness, & driven by less desirable women.
Abstract: Women’s intrasexual competition has received significant attention only in the last decades, with even less work investigating women’s defenses against such aggression. Yet, we should expect that women can (a) grasp which perceptually-salient cues evoke same-sex aggression and (b) strategically damp the display of (some of) those cues when aggression risk is greatest, thereby avoiding the potentially high costs of victimization. Women selectively aggress against women displaying cues of sexual permissiveness (e.g., revealing dress) and/or desirability (e.g., physical attractiveness). We find that (a) women (and men) anticipate greater intrasexual aggression toward women dressed revealingly versus modestly, especially if targets are attractive. Employing behavioral and self-report measures, we also find (b) women create outfits baring less skin, select more modest clothing, and intend to dress less revealingly to encounter other women, flexibly damping permissiveness cues depending on individual features (physical attractiveness) and situational features (being a newcomer) that amplify aggression risk.
Keywords: evolutionary psychology, intrasexual aggression, female sociality, female aggression defenses
General Discussion
In four experiments, we find (1) women (and men) expect
women—and especially physically attractive women—to
evoke greater indirect (but not direct) intrasexual aggression
when revealingly versus modestly dressed; (2) women dress
more modestly for encountering same- versus mixed-sex
groups—across contexts (professional, social); (3) more physically
attractive women, who may be at greater risk of incurring
intrasexual aggression, demonstrate an exaggerated tendency
to do this; and (4) this effect is apparent only when such women
dress to meet a prospective (but not existing) female friend.
Findings are consistent with theorizing that women are not only
aware that certain perceptually-salient cues (e.g., revealing
clothes, physical attractiveness) render them more likely targets
of intrasexual aggression, but also that women might thus
seek to avoid such aggression by strategically manipulating
their appearance—specifically, by damping their outfit provocativeness.
Importantly, this damping is flexibly engaged when
aggression risk is highest: by individuals who may already be
frequent targets (physically attractive women), and in situations
when aggression is more likely (when women are
newcomers).
Our focus on women’s interactions with other women was,
in part, to address the fact that the majority of research on
women’s clothing and consumption has focused on women’s
male audiences and the possible benefits associated with
attracting such audiences (e.g., Buss, 1988; Durante et al.,
2011; Elliott et al., 2013; Haselton et al., 2007; Padza, Elliott,
& Greitemeyer, 2012; Saad, 2013; Sacco, Bermond, & Young,
2016; but see Blake, Fourati, & Brooks, 2018; Hudders, De
Backer, Fisher, & Vyncke, 2014). We would not argue that
other women are always the sole intended audience for
women’s sartorial cues and/or signals, and even when other
women are the intended audience, we would not expect that
women’s sartorial choices are always calibrated only toward
avoiding intrasexual aggression. Rather, because attracting and
maintaining same-sex friends can confer numerous important
benefits for women (e.g., Campbell, 2002), future work could
benefit from exploring how women might manipulate their
appearances to establish and maintain same-sex friendships—
as well as to avoid same-sex aggression. For example, donning
the baggy sorority t-shirts and short shorts common to young
women on some college campuses may communicate not only
the wearer’s on-campus status but also her dedication to her
coalition.
Similarly, we do not assume that attracting the attention of
male audiences yields only opportunities (and not also threats).
Our data imply that women are attuned to the possible benefits
and costs of male attention, damping provocative dress when
encountering prospective male friends (but not romantic partners),
whose unwanted sexual interest could be threatening.
In all, findings suggest that women’s sartorial behavior is
attuned to multiple factors, including women’s own attractiveness,
the social context, and several audience features (e.g.,
audience gender composition, familiarity with their audience).
Future work might further investigate these and other nuances
(e.g., Glick, Larsen, Johnson, & Branstiter, 2005).
This work adds to literature suggesting that features cuing
women’s intentions to attract men (e.g., provocative dress) can
evoke aggression, but so too can features cuing women’s ability
to attract men (e.g., physical attractiveness). This implies
that some women might attract intrasexual aggression without
having engaged in behavior to prompt it. That is, women might
be aggressed against for being competitive (e.g., for desirable
romantic partners), even if those women were not actively
competing. One might speculate that, in contrast, men are
unlikely to evoke intrasexual aggression without having
actively provoked it. Whereas past work has uncovered sex differences
in tactics of intrasexual aggression, future work might
benefit from systematically exploring possible sex differences
in what features evoke intrasexual aggression.
We also note some limitations. One might speculate that stimulus
effects drove the results of Experiment 1. This is
possible; Experiment 1 used one stimulus per condition, and
this can be problematic for issues of validity and generalizability.
Perhaps somewhat mitigating these concerns, findings were
consistent with previous research examining actual aggression
toward those stimuli (Vaillancourt & Sharma, 2011); women
were more indirectly aggressive to an average-weight, revealingly
(versus modestly) dressed target, and we find that people
expect the average-weight, revealingly dressed target to
receive heightened intrasexual indirect aggression. Additionally,
we knowingly confounded sex composition and social
context in Experiment 2, which could also have suffered from
demand characteristics given its within-subjects design. To
address this, Experiment 3 conceptually replicated Experiment
2, setting sex composition orthogonal to social context,
and using a between-subjects design.
Check also Women made more negative attributions about, & experienced diminished desire to affiliate with, female targets wearing (vs. not wearing) cosmetics. This penalty was specific to female observers, mediated by decreases in perceived trustworthiness, & driven by less desirable women.
DelPriore, D. J., Bradshaw, H. K., & Hill, S. E. (2018). Appearance Enhancement Produces a Strategic Beautification Penalty Among Women. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/women-made-more-negative-attributions.html
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